Once Bitten, Twice Shy
by RunningInAir
Summary: Sylvia Gilbert left Mystic Falls for Richmond looking for a calmer life. There she met her boyfriend, Damon, who left for months without warning only to return with his brother and some disturbing news. How will Sylvia survive a moody ex-boyfriend, his struggling blood addict brother, her humanity-less aunt, and an immortal hybrid who believes her blood can create a new species?
1. Ice Cream

Chapter One

Sylvia Gilbert inhaled, holding the smooth, bitter smoke in her mouth for a moment before releasing a white cloud in a long sigh. She hated that she had picked up smoking again. The dilapidated cigarette rested smugly between her first and middle fingers, almost taunting her with its addictive nicotine and cell-killing chemicals. She sneered down at it. Cigarettes. What did they know anyway?

Her head rested gently against the pale red wall of her bedroom and one foot hung loosely off the side of the halfway-deflated air mattress that served as her bed. Her pillow scrunched uncomfortably beneath her as she slid from her sitting position onto her back, the smoke from her cigarette going straight up her nostrils burning away her olfactory senses. A long drag completed the connection between the ash and the filter, and she drilled the butt into the ashtray lying next to her on the floor, scowling as it tipped over, spilling dirty ash onto the hardwood. Seeing that it wasn't going to catch the room ablaze, she let it go. Certainly she'd clean it up later. Right?

She laid her arm across her stomach and closed her eyes, the fingers of her left hand picking out chords on an imagined guitar – an old habit. The rosy walls were nauseating at the moment. Combine the disgusting color with the haze of smoke being lazily pushed around the room by the ceiling fan and it was enough to overwhelm even her dulled senses on this dreary, oppressively contemplative evening. Why had she ever thought _rose_would make a decent color? Her lips twisted into a frown. What a load of bollocks. She knew exactly why she had picked that color. Blood had been too dark, so she had chosen the next best thing. How foolish she could be.

As she lay there on her mattress, the quiet of the apartment nearly overwhelming her, her mind began to wander to all the places it wasn't supposed to go. Brief flashes of the past months ricocheted around inside her brain, several of the more painful ones repeating in earnest. She closed her eyes shut tighter and focused on picking each memory up and tossing it into a trashcan where tiny metal teeth gnashed and destroyed each shred of pain until it was eradicated completely from existence in her mind. She didn't need that. Not right now. Her mood was dim enough without recalling the past weeks of depression, angst and utter loneliness.

It took several minutes of concentration, but she could finally sit in the quiet without thinking. It really was quiet, she suddenly noticed, eerily so. Her ears were popping with the silence that was only broken by the occasional creak from the old fan as it labored to cool off the room.

These were the moments where, in the movies, something would happen. Just when everything was quiet, a loud, booming noise would disrupt everything. Something crazy. Something destructive. She held her breath as every nerve ending tensed in anticipation for some calamity. She waited…she hoped…she may have even prayed a little, but the walls stayed in tact, the air remained pregnant with smoke, and the monotony of the ceiling fan droned on unabated. She sighed and pulled her arm off her abdomen and swung it onto the top of the radio beside her, feeling around blindly for the FM switch. A click, and the smooth, wave-like notes seemed to diffuse directly from the speakers and flow around her, filling her chest and twining around her hands before joining the smoke's circular parade around the room:

"_Once upon a time I was falling in love  
Now, I'm only falling apart  
There's nothing I can do  
A total eclipse of the heart"_

The words stuck in her mind, as if some sort of diplomat had slammed his seal in wax onto her brain, forever imprinting the lyrics there. She opened her eyes, only to have _his_face swim into her view. She blinked furiously in an attempt to dissipate the image. Her open palm slapped against the wall, hard; that single act filled with the frustration and anger that usually lay dormant underneath her sadness and despair. She immediately regretted it as shock waves of pain spiraled up her arm and culminated in her shoulder.

_"Turn around bright eyes  
Every now and then I fall apart"_

Rolling her shoulder in circles she raised herself up off the mattress. Her bare feet padded quietly across the old wooden floor through the hallway. A peal of thunder shook the house and she stopped, listening hard to the first poundings of rain falling heavily on the roof. She could already smell the freshness of the new drops bringing life back to this over-cooked land, causing the lushness of all the greenery to brighten noticeably. Her hands traced lightly over the molding of the hallway walls as the whole apartment lit up with a sudden flash of light. The radio still continuing its song was barely audible above the howling, lonely winds rattling the shudders; invisible hands reaching past the window pane in an attempt to fill the rooms with their sighs, their desires. Asleep on the antique, bedraggled couch in the living room, she found her cat, his tufted fur standing up in odd places and his paws outstretched before him in pursuit of a dream mouse.

Naturally, Harold was oblivious to the anxiety permeating the rental that late summer evening. The feeling pushed down on Sylvia heavily, though, almost forcing her thoughts into one another forming a long, seam-less muse – thoughts she really shouldn't be thinking at all. Quiet as she could, she creaked the door open and crept outside. Harold was one exasperating cat when he wanted to go outside, and once he got out, she'd have to chase him all over the neighborhood to bring him back in. She loved that fuzzy cat, but she was not in the right spirit to go chasing him around in a storm that looked to be in the beginning throws of a serious rage.

Under the safety of the outreaching metal lip of the gutter above her door, Sylvia held a hand out feeling a few splashes of rain on her fingers. She loved how summer rains were always so warm, had even written a song about it, but she took no joy in the feeling now. The wind was refusing to go along with the rain's lead in temperature; it blew chilly gusts through the trees, causing them to swing dangerously against the darkening sky, then continued its angry path into her hair tossing it this way and that, pushing it in front of her eyes before whipping it back over her shoulder. Even the water in the pond across the street was suffering from the moody disposition of the weather, the surface so disrupted, the ducks did not dare attempt a swim; instead, they all cowered under trees and in the midst of bushes.

Looking about her at the subtle, graceful beauty of Richmond, Sylvia reaffirmed herself in her decision to move from Mystic Falls. It was rough most days, being removed from her friends, but her brother and his wife lived only a few minutes away from her new flat, and anything was better than staying in that old town. She had loved the antiquity of it when she first arrived, a naïve fourteen-year-old girl who thought she knew everything about the world, but now, at twenty-five, she was ready to move on. Too many bad things had happened there; too many people had died, for her to want to stick around any longer.

When her Aunt had mysteriously disappeared, she had inherited her house in Mystic Falls. Sylvia had never quite gotten over that loss. She had been extremely close with her Aunt Elena. Her father, Jeremy Gilbert, had been devastated, his sister being the only living relative he had had left. He had refused to keep his sister's house and had urged Sylvia to sell it immediately, a nice property like that was sure to bring in some decent money, but Sylvia had denied his request. If Aunt Elena had meant Sylvia to have it, she would keep it.

That had been before the weird things started happening.

Sylvia, barely sixteen at the time of her Aunt's dissapearance, began to look more and more like her deceased relative every day. Her hair had the same shade of brown, though it fell in waves down her back instead of the unnaturally straight character of Elena's. She was tall and thin. Her nose was the same length, her lips the same full pout, and her eyes the exact shade, as if someone had made a carbon copy of her Aunt. It was eerie, to Sylvia, the way several people of the town, especially her Aunt's friends, stared at her as she passed. They _were_ related, true, but none of her friends looked so very much like their relatives. They could have easily passed as twins, save the differences age wrought.

On her eighteenth birthday, Sylvia began to feel like she was being watched. When she related to her father the cold that radiated down her spine so often, he panicked. He began to rant and rave irrationally about creatures of the night and evil in the town, but could never tell Sylvia exactly what he was so afraid of.

Sylvia had chalked his behavior up to the beginning of Alzheimer's. It was no secret that some kind of crazy ran in her family. When he began to tear the house apart looking for some box of journals he said were hidden there, Sylvia had called a nursing home nearby, but her father would have none of that. He submitted to testing, but was found perfectly capable, mentally and physically, of taking care of himself. If that had been the end of everything, she might have stayed the rest of her life in that sleepy little town. As it was, however, there was a string of disappearances in all the cities immediately surrounding that town, and some internal warning system set Sylvia's hair on end nearly all the time.

When a local boy was found murdered, Jeremy Gilbert moved away; left the town and all his misery and fears behind him, to New York, of all places. How he thrived in a city so different from the small, homey feeling of Mystic Falls, Sylvia would never know, but thrive he did. She visited her old man once or twice a month since he vowed to never set foot in Virginia again. Thankfully, Sylvia's younger brother, Jackson, and his wife May, remained in the state. They had been the ones who told her about the apartment she was now living in. She had left not too long after her father. It was just too sad in Mystic Falls with all of her family gone, and too weird with the disappearances that were so like her own Aunt's.

So, she had moved to Richmond, started writing songs again, got a job at a local pizza parlor, and within a few years signed on with a small local record label.

That's when she had met Damon Salvatore.

Frowning as his memory once again popped into her mind, Sylvia stepped back inside, pulling her hoodie off the coat rack by the door, her keys jingling inside the pocket. She would treat herself to some ice cream.

Damon Salvatore, indeed.

After locking the front door, Sylvia walked slowly down the metal staircase of the apartment complex to the ground below. Very conscious of the cold dampness creeping up her blue jeans as she stepped through the wet grass, she hurried her steps. Naturally, when she tried the keys, the lock stuck. Some days she wished she could just throw her car in a ditch for all the trouble it caused her. After her shirt had gotten thoroughly soaked through and she had just about given up hopes of getting the lock unstuck, a satisfying click told her that the key had decided to do its job after all. She opened the door and jumped inside, shutting herself in against the rain that was now falling more heavily. Of course, she hadn't had time to replace the windshield wipers, yet, as the plexi-glass/ductape window combination was her first priority. The constant squeak of the wipers fighting the rain in a losing battle accompanied the roar of the engine as she began backing her boat of an Oldsmobile out of the driveway. Her poor car…

Honestly, Sylvia hated driving in the rain, especially when the sky looked as if it had been terribly wronged, but if her brain was going to insist on traipsing down Memory Lane all night, she needed some therapy food.

She slowed to a careful stop at the red light down the road. Waiting for her turn to maneuver onto the highway, she beat a rhythm on the steering wheel and hummed rather tunelessly. She desperately needed to write a new song soon or she'd likely be out of a job. Her manager wasn't too fond of her sitting on her ass, doing nothing. It wasn't like she hadn't been trying; it was hard to write when you didn't know how you'd feel from one day to the next, and not every song should be depressing and heart-broken, full of lament and confusion. That did not make for a good album.

The green light reflected eerily off the soaked road and Sylvia pressed down on the gas pedal. Right as she began to cross the darkened street, a jolt of motion flashed across her field of vision. She screamed and slammed her foot on the break, sliding across the rest of the road and bumping against the guardrail on the other side. Her fingers were bone white against the dark green of the wheel and she labored to catch her breath. What the hell had just happened?!

She fingered the lock on the door, double-checking it, before she peered out the windows into the deep blue of the dying evening light. It was impossible to see very far; certainly not weather she should be driving in, she thought sardonically. The rain fell in earnest and it was twilight – the most difficult time to see – when all the shades of blue melded together and perception became tricky. Still, she searched. The "open" sign in the window of the little fresh market down the highway blinked feebly, just enough to distort things even more with its red glow. The streetlights were on, but their orange globes didn't do much to dispel the darkening night, either. Fervently hoping it wasn't_ him_, Sylvia shook herself and pulled back onto the road. There was no sense in getting out and looking at her car. She hadn't hit the guardrail hard, and her car couldn't be in much worse shape than it already was. Besides, if there really was someone out there, if she hadn't just imagined that, she didn't want to see him anyway… She didn't.

The drive to the ice cream parlor, though only a few minutes, felt like an hour. She was on edge now, the constant thunder only making her more jumpy as she searched every shadow for movement. She sat in her car for a moment after parking, looking about her very carefully before jumping out of the car, not bothering to lock it behind her, and making a beeline for the parlor door. The parking lot was empty save for the employee's cars, and no wonder. All the sane people would stay safe and dry at home on this night. All Virginia needed was another hurricane.

"Sylvia! What are you doing here?" Cole's astonished voice sounded loud in the quiet of the small parlor as Sylvia leaned gratefully against the door, the fluorescent lighting unusually comforting.

Forcing a smile and a light-hearted laugh, Sylvia replied, "You know me! I'm a sucker for a cruise in such gorgeous weather." She made her way across the tiled floor to the counter where Cole was leaning, his shaggy brown hair in its usual disarray around his heart-shaped face. Sylvia noticed his hazel eyes brighten and fought down feelings of discomfort. She knew Cole fancied her; he had for a while now, though she never indicated any reciprocity of feeling. He seemed to think, maddeningly, that every time she smiled or said something even remotely funny that she was flirting with him. She'd find another ice cream parlor, surely, if this one wasn't so close – and cheap.

"It is a beautiful evening," Cole said with a genuine laugh. "It's just…" he gestured out the window to the downpour. "You hate driving in the rain, Syl."

Sylvia nodded and tucked a stray strand of sopping wet hair behind her ear in an attempt to hide the wince at his familiar nickname. She hated when he called her that. "You know me well, Cole. I just really, really needed some ice cream."

"Moose Tracks, I'm assuming?" He chuckled and moved away from the counter, grabbing a cup and scooping a rather large scoop of ice cream into it, covering the top with an obscene amount of sprinkles and sticking a spoon into it. He presented the treat to her as if it was a diamond ring. "Drowning in sprinkles, for the lady." He grinned at his joke and Sylvia managed another laugh, barely. She would definitely need to find a new ice cream place.

"Thanks, Cole." She nodded her head towards a small stool by a window. "I'm just gonna sit over here. Go back to whatever it is you do around here." She softened her words with a smile and took her seat, staring out into the stormy night.

She couldn't deny that Cole was cute. His boyish looks were alluring in their own way, but she had never been attracted to _boys_. Unbidden, the image of _his_ face came back to her view, all square jaw and rugged manliness. She took a deep steadying breath and dug into her ice cream with earnest. She _would_ forget him. It had been four and a half months and he hadn't gotten in touch with her once. There had been no letters, no calls, no texts, no e-mails…nothing. Her brother, ever the psychologist, had said she was going through the five stages of grief, but Sylvia tried to stay in the anger phase. That was the safest. She could hide behind anger.

The first spoonful of ice cream in her mouth nearly made her moan. Nothing hit the spot in times of emotional turmoil like ice cream; particularly free ice cream – something she could count on Cole for, despite his creepy almost-come-on's. She dipped the spoon back into the paper cup but froze when the lightning flashed, illuminating the parking lot of the bar-b-q joint across the way. There had been someone standing there, she was sure of it…but that was absurd. No one would just stand around in a storm in the middle of an empty parking lot. Her imagination, her fear, perhaps even her longing, were all getting the best of her. Shaking her head, Sylvia tried to ignore the warning bells going off in her mind and just enjoy her ice cream. She'd be damned if Damon was going to take this simple pleasure away from her, too.

She couldn't deny, though, that it was becoming harder and harder to keep her mind off of him. What was wrong with her? Shouldn't the months of being ignored make her less inclined to see him, instead of more? Again, the horrible thoughts that something had happened to him tried to force their way between the cracks in her cortex and fester, but she was done with that. She couldn't afford to think like that.

She hurried through the rest of her treat, knowing that scarfing down all that ice cream so fast was going to give her hell later, tossed the trash in the waste bin at the back of the store, and quickly walked to the door. She'd just smoke a quick cigarette under the awning and then go back home. She could cuddle with Harold and listen to the storm from the safety of her bedroom. She nodded to herself. That was a safe and healthy plan. Well, the cigarette wasn't healthy, but she wasn't going to think about that right now.

Ignoring the hurt in Cole's eyes as she waved a quick goodbye, Sylvia pushed the door open and stepped out into the night, keeping her gaze trained away from that parking lot. She fished down into her pocket and pulled out her slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes and her bic. She was slightly embarrassed to find that her hands were shaking a little as she tried to get the lighter to catch. Come on! There was no way this thing was dead already. She did _not_ want to have to go by the gas station just to smoke a cigarette. This was turning into one hellish night, that was certain. She held the betraying device up to her ear and shook it, but it was impossible to audibly tell if there was any lighter fluid left with the downpour going on all around her. Sighing heavily, she scanned the parking lot, preparing for a sprint to her car.

"Need a light?"

The deep voice seemed to come out of nowhere and Sylvia jumped and screamed, dropping her addiction and busted lighter. She closed her eyes, refusing to believe her senses, but she knew it was him. The lighter and cigarettes never made a splash; they had never hit the ground. It couldn't be anyone else. His scent, all masculine musk with a hint of clean peppermint and a dash of…_other_…swept its way up her nostrils, filling her.

No, no, no! She did _not_ want to see him. She couldn't handle it. Not when she was so close to convincing herself she didn't need him…

"Sylvia," her name sounded like a caress coming from his mouth. "Look at me."

She couldn't help it. She opened her eyes, and her heart, that glutton for punishment, went into double time as her gaze locked with his impossibly blue orbs. It felt like a fist was squeezing her chest and punching her in the gut at the same time. After a moment, she realized he was holding her cigarettes out to her, the pack open, one cigarette extended out farther than the rest. She took it, her fingers shaking more noticeably now. When she just stood there holding it numbly in her fingers, he reached out and grasped her wrist, bringing her own hand up to her mouth until she wrapped her lips around the cigarette. He then flicked his own fingers, the lighter he held lighting instantly, and brought the flame to the end of her tobacco. She inhaled, the tip igniting and glowing red.

His lips turned into a smirk as he took a cigarette for himself and lit it, puffing away in the night. That smirk…so, this really _was_ happening. There was no way she could be imaging that smirk in such perfect, arousing detail. She stood there, her cigarette turning to ashes, and watched as he casually leaned against the soaked, brick wall of the building. It was then she noticed that he was even more rain drenched than she was.

"It _was _you!" she blurted out. His expression remained infuriatingly smug. "How…how _dare_ you!" Yes, that was good. Hold on to that anger. "I could have _died_! You don't just flash by in front of someone who is driving in the rain! How _dare_ you!" She threw her cigarette at his feet and stalked off towards her car, ignoring the rain beating down on her head. Ignoring her treacherous heart that was screaming at her to turn around. Ignoring her cynical brain that was telling her she should at least take the cigarettes with her. Her sole purpose in life now to get to her car.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right that he could just show up after five months of nothing and expect her to just do whatever he wanted without so much as an explanation, to just stand there all smug and smirk without so much as an, "I'm sorry I broke your heart. Here's my nuts. Punch me." It wasn't fair that her heart felt like it was breaking even more as she walked away from him, but she couldn't stand looking at him any longer. She just had to get home.

She reached for her door but found her movement stopped by his hand on her arm. "Sylvia, wait." She held her breath, trying in vain to ignore the static waves of arousal radiating from her arm down her center. How was it possible that he could still make her feel like this? "Let me come over. Let's talk." She tried. She tried so hard to hold on to her anger, her indignation…and she failed. And he knew. Without even waiting for an audible answer, he opened her door, waited for her to climb in, and then sped around to the other side.

Steeling herself, Sylvia put the keys in the ignition and started the sure-to-be uncomfortable drive back to her apartment. She did not look at him, though she could feel his eyes on her. If she looked at him, she knew she would be unable to look away. His gaze on her, though, was like a fire hot brand on her skin, burning away all sense of who she was and turning her into something that belonged to him. The rest of her anger shed away from her heart, leaving nothing but a sense of betrayal and a longing so acute it was like a shard of glass in her chest.

When they gained her driveway and the roar of the engine died away, they sat there in her car, Sylvia afraid to move, afraid to look at him, completely unaware of what was going through his mind. When she simply couldn't stand it anymore, she pried her gaze from the night and looked beside her at the creature who belonged to it…Damon Salvatore.

Damon _fucking_ Salvatore.

* * *

A/N: So, this is my first ever fanfiction based off of "The Vampire Diaries." I'm a huge sucker (pun-intended) for sexy vamps and that show definitely has them. I've always loved Damon, the bad guy/good guy drama. That's what I hope to capture in this story. If you follow the show, this is set way in the future since Sylvia is Elena's brother's daughter. I wanted to go off of what would happen if another doppelganger were to pop up later on the line and Damon was still around. Let me know what you think? I know this starts off a bit slow, maybe confusing if you're not in my head, but I promise the coming chapters will be easier to follow and flow a bit easier. I tend to have rough starts, but once I get in the groove of the story, I own it.

Read and review, please! That's what we authors love. ;)

-Running

P.S. - The song lyrics in italics are from "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler. A beautiful song if you've never heard it.


	2. His Return

Chapter 2

The soft clink of ice in a glass accompanied Damon's entrance to the living room. He plunked a second glass on the table in front of Sylvia, but she only stared at it. Her defensive posture was in full swing as she sat on the couch: her knees were pressed tightly together, her elbows resting on top of them, and her fingers intertwined and pressed to her chin. Damon sat down beside her, easy as you please, and took a sip of his cognac. Harold came bounding into the room intent on some scritches, but stopped short when he seemed to notice Sylvia was not alone. He hissed, the fur on his back sticking up even more than usual, and skittered out of the room. His claws could be heard scratching on the wood floor in his haste to escape, and Sylvia almost smiled. At least her cat was loyal to her.

When Damon held a cigarette in front of her, she gladly took it, not even bothering to mention that they were her cigarettes in the first place. Nicotine could calm her nerves at least a little. She took a shaky puff, releasing the cloud into the room and reached down for her glass. Cigarettes _and_ liquor, hm? This should be interesting. She took a long drink before she replaced the glass on the table and settled back into the couch, trying to appear more relaxed than she felt, knowing it wasn't working at all. Damon's smirk was still on his face as if he knew just what kind of an effect he was having, and dammit, he had quite an effect. She should be furious with him. She should have refused to see him. She should have at least demanded some form of an answer from him before allowing him to explode back into her life. But what had she done? Stammered, shook, and let him into her car.

What an idiot.

"Was that a sigh?"

His voice broke the awkward silence that had taken place since they got in the car together and Sylvia winced. She had most certainly not intended to sigh out loud. She took another hit from her cigarette before she replied, "Yes. It was." Damn him, she did not want to sit here feeling so…afraid…while he just relaxed on her furniture and acted as if he owned the place. Did he not care at all that he hadn't seen her for so long? Did she mean that little to him?

"I must admit, I'm surprised by you, Sylvia," he said after another few moments of quiet. "I expected," he gestured aimlessly in the air with a hand, "more."

Sylvia didn't have to try to sound sardonic. "More…what…exactly, Damon?"

"More anger, more feeling." His eyes lit up like he was telling a good story, or expecting to hear a good story. "I guess you don't care for me like I thought."

Sylvia's mouth dropped open and she whipped her head up to regard him. That ass! He was sitting there with the biggest smirk possible on his lips, his eyes alight with mischief and amusement, while she felt like her heart had been ripped out of her chest, thrown onto the ground and shat on while she stood by and watched.

No. She may miss him. She may feel like her chest was full of lead. She may even need him. But she was most certainly not going to just sit here while he acted so…Damon-like in her apartment! The rage she needed came bubbling easily to the surface as she let her memories of the last five months of her life come crashing over her one by one. She held on to that rage and imagined daggers coated in it flying right at his irritatingly perfect face.

"I knew it. I _knew_ I shouldn't have let you in here. I should have never even let you in my car. You should have just stayed out in that miserable rain." Her eyes flashed with anger and indignation, but this only seemed to please Damon more. He looked expectantly at her and drank from his glass. "You leave me for _five_ months with no word, no warning, nothing at all, and then just waltz back into my life and expect me to…what? Do you want me to just pretend like nothing happened? Do you think I'm just going to fall all over you and tell you how glad I am that you're back? How much I missed you? Well, I'm not and I didn't."

His smile grew bigger, and worse, he leaned closer to her. Her hands were shaking even more after her outburst, but she lifted her cigarette to her lips anyway and took a long drag. She flicked the ashes into the tray on the table and tried to lean away from him, only to find that she was already up against the armrest on her side.

Her gaze flicked up to his eyes, but she couldn't keep them there. There were times, she remembered vividly, that his eyes gave away nothing, no matter how long you searched them; but other times, like now, they were brimming with his thoughts. What she saw in that brief flash of blue was disconcerting. It was mischievous. It was dark and playful. It was Damon as he had been when she was nineteen. Dangerous.

"You're lying to me," he said, his voice a low, seductive murmur. "I can tell. Your pulse is racing, and you won't look me in the eyes."

Fuck.

Sylvia took a deep breath to steady herself, repeating over and over in her mind that she was stronger than this. She _didn't_ need him. She wouldn't allow herself to become one of those sniveling girls who couldn't stop pining over their exes…no matter how attractive, funny, playful, and sexual… NO.

"I'm not lying," she said stubbornly. She steeled herself and lifted her eyes, meeting his gaze. That was a mistake. His blue eyes were so clear and so bottomless she felt herself falling into them all over again. "I don't want to look at you, Damon."

Had that really just come out of her mouth? Sylvia felt her eyes widen in surprise at her own boldness, whether it was intended or not. She pressed her lips tightly together and brought her hand to her mouth to take the last drag of her cigarette, noting with relief that her hand was no longer shaking.

The soft hiss of the tobacco going out sounded overly loud in the quiet room as she ground the glowing tip into the metal of the ashtray. She could bear it no more. She looked at Damon in his uncharacteristic silence. Something flickered in the azure depths of his eyes. Was that hurt? There was no way. He was probably just surprised she had admitted it.

As if to confirm her negative thoughts, the left corner of his mouth twitched up in a half grin. "Oh?" His tone was taunting. "And why is that?" Nonchalantly, he took another swig of his glass, draining the remains of the deep brown liquid.

"I…well…I quit putting vervain in my tea…" she admitted.

Shit. That was one thing she had certainly not planned on saying. What was the matter with her?

Damon blinked and there was the slightest hesitation in his movements as he went to set his glass on the table. That was definitely surprise that time. "Why would you do that? I'm not the only vampire around here. You know that. Or are you just _trying_ to be disappointed?" Now he sounded condescending _and _disappointed. That did not set well with her.

Before she responded, she reached for her own glass of liquor and took a deep drink. She knew when she had quit taking that vile-tasting herb that she would be susceptible to other beings, but sense Damon had left, none had even been around her. At least, none that she had _felt_.

She nodded once as she wrapped the glass tightly between both of her hands. "I knew it was fairly risky." Nearly holding her breath, she lifted her gaze once more to his. "But after you left," she let the word hang between them for a moment, "no one else like you came around me. I was just left alone, and I didn't want to see it anymore, anyway. I took it for about a month, but after that…" she trailed off.

In a blink, his hand flashed out and gripped her chin, much more gently than she had anticipated; yet she still jumped, her half-full glass nearly spilling in his hasty movement. He directed her face up and remained silent until she looked him in the eyes once more. There it was. That pull in her gut, that desire to listen to him and do anything he wanted. She would do anything he asked. She was completely his.

"After that…?" he prompted, his voice dripping with impatience and laced with sarcastic undertones.

"It just reminded me of you," she said, her voice hushed. "I just threw it all away."

He released her, and rose to his feet. Sylvia blinked once, twice, and a third time before she felt the last of his hold – like drifts of fog – clear her mind. She glared up at him as he walked casually to her bookshelf, his back to her.

"Don't _do_ that."

"You were asking for it. If you can't control yourself, you obviously need someone else to control you."

Funny. He had only been back in her life for a scant hour and he was already trying to dictate her every move, make every decision for her. Had she really missed him? Maybe she had just perfected him in her mind while he was absent. Maybe she didn't really want him back after all. She remained on the couch, seething. She just needed to tell him to get the hell out of her apartment, and stay out of her life. She cleared her throat, prepared to speak.

"I saw your father."

His words rang in her ears and her whole body jerked in surprise. She had never told her father about Damon, wanting to hide the knowledge of these would-be fairy tale creatures from him. He was getting on in years and already suffered random moments of panic for no reason, not even knowing what had caused it when it was over. There was no way she was going to add any more stress to his fragile state of mind. Likewise, she had never talked to Damon much about her father. He was stashed away safely in New York and her relationship with Damon had stayed in Richmond. Of course, Damon knew a little about her father, these topics come up in relationships, but she had been sure to leave out most of the details, especially her family's history in Mystic Falls.

She regarded Damon carefully, taking in his expectant posture. Why would he want to see her father, especially when he hadn't even been near her? Thinking back, Sylvia realized it had been some time since she had visited Manhattan. When Damon left, he had taken a lot of her inspiration with him and she had just been in a funk. The prospect of flying to New York and dealing with the never-ending noise of the city was not appealing in the slightest. Still, she had called her dad several times and there had never been a mention of him meeting anyone interesting or noteworthy. Damon was certainly interesting. What was he hiding? What did he know?

"Why did you see my father? You don't even know him."

At that, Damon turned on his heel, his eyes flashing with intelligence and a glimmer of malicious intent. What had happened in these last few months to bring this rough and twisted version of Damon back? Years they had been together, since that day at the recording studio. Sylvia thought she had ridded him of all his darkness long ago. What traumatic events had he endured to have it brought back so completely?

"Jeremy Gilbert and I go way back, Sylvia."

His words were chilling and they made no sense. Never in all of her life had her father ever mentioned Damon Salvatore nor anything about him. Damon was not an easily forgettable character, either. Not unless…

His smirk widened as he realized she had caught on.

"That's what I've always liked about you, Sylvia. You've got a quick mind."

"Stop with your meaningless compliments, Damon. What the hell did you do to my father? Why would you make him forget you? It must have been you." As the ramifications of this newest discovery hit her, Sylvia's anger grew. The journals. The seemingly senseless panic attacks. The unexplainable fear that haunted her father. Was Damon behind it all? "How could you?" She demanded, her voice hoarse with emotion.

Maddeningly, Damon gave nothing away. He continued his too-casual stroll around her living room, inspecting pictures and knick-knacks as if they were the most interesting things he had ever seen.

As he remained quiet, a superior smug look plastered on his face, Sylvia slammed the glass down onto the table and rose to her feet. She would be damned if she was going to let him get away with being evasive. She was not a toy he could play with whenever he chose and she would not stand by while he gloated over her with knowledge of her own father.

"Answer me, Damon!" She clinched her hands into fists at her sides.

He turned and appraised her. She held her ground, keeping her offensive stance firmly planted, refusing to back down like she had so often in the past.

"Well, now. This is interesting." He stepped forward until they were nearly touching, his entire being radiating cockiness like he was made of it. "I seem to posses some information you want, Sylvia." He was so close she could feel his breath drifting over her face, the minty scent clinging to her skin. She would ignore it. Clenching her fists tighter, she held on to mental images of her father, using them as a guard against Damon's influence. So long as she didn't look him in the eye, he couldn't control her.

"My question is…" His voice dropped lower, a husky growl in her ear. She felt more than saw him move fractionally closer. The tiny hairs all over her body seemed hypersensitive to his whereabouts.

She barely stifled a gasp as the coolness of his hand rested against her cheek. It was a soft touch, a disarming touch. Unable to resist, Sylvia trailed her gaze from his collarbone where she had been focused, up his neck, over his defined jaw, past his lips that were barely parted and too inviting, all the way up to his eyes. They were smoldering.

This time, she could not stop the sharp intake of air, which only served to darken his eyes further and fill her with his scent. She felt herself starting to drown and she knew there would be no saving her this time. Dimly, in the back of her mind, the thought that she didn't want to be saved nudged her consciousness.

"…what will you give me in return?"

The dark promise in those words nearly brought Sylvia to her knees. Unbidden, those thoughts she had locked away deep in the recesses of her mind came flooding back, assaulting her every sense, taking over all thought. Flashes of pale, perfect skin over her, around her, _in _her, danced provocatively behind her eyes. The smell of sweat, sex, musk, mint, and male filled her nose. His low grunts of pleasure sounded in her ears and she could swear she tasted the coolness of his flesh on her tongue.

She felt his influence in her mind and she no longer knew if he was forcing her to see these things, or if his mere presence caused her mind to journey these dark roads on its own. She didn't care. The memories washed over her, wave after wave of torment. Her anger and indignation at his secretive hints flowed away in a deluge of need.

"Please…"

The plea was so soft she didn't even know if he had heard it. She didn't know what she was begging for…did she want him to stop or continue his mental seduction?

He must have heard her. The sensations faded away until she felt nothing. The cool touch of his hand on her face removed, warmth came flooding back to her pores. Her memories dissolved back into grey as the present came crashing back to her awareness.

When she finally had the sense to open her eyes, she saw that he had not moved from his place before her. His jaw was clenched tightly, the darkness in his eyes flashing as his gaze flicked from one of her amber eyes to the other. What he was searching for Sylvia did not know. Her mind was open. Her heart was open.

"Damon," she finally said, her voice not a whisper but still quiet, "I will give you… whatever you want." Her breath hitched in her throat, but she swallowed down her feelings, leaving her chest full but her face devoid of emotion. "I will always give you whatever you want…"

For a moment, Sylvia thought the tension between the two of them would turn into a visible wall, but an exasperated sigh left Damon's mouth and he rolled his eyes, effectively breaking the somber turn the conversation had taken. "Why must you be so dramatic, Sylvia?" he said as he walked out of the room. His voice drifted to her over the sound of clinking glass as he fixed himself another drink in her kitchen. "You've always been that way."

Sylvia lifted a trembling hand to her face and wiped away the single tear that had fallen. How could he do that? She knew there was no way she could ever go from that dark, predatory, arousal to sarcastic and distant the next. Maybe you just had to live for a couple hundred years to have that talent.

She had to get him to leave. It was not safe for her with Damon in her apartment. She had just admitted to him how much she wanted him back, what effect he still had on her. Things would only go downhill from here.

Not entirely sure if she could trust her legs, Sylvia slowly made her way to the wall beside the door, leaning her weight against it. She was just going to have to make him leave. Somehow.

"I always thought your flair for the arts would make you a great vampire, but Stefan always said it wasn't a life for—"

His words stopped midsentence as he saw her position. She had turned the knob and pushed the door open, her meaning clear as a bell. Damon froze, the soft tinkling of ice the only sound in the room as he regarded her. Sylvia kept her head high, knowing how foolish she must look as she used the wall for support. If there were any decency left in Damon, if his humanity had not completely vanished, surely he would leave. Surely he would not remain here if she clearly did not want him present.

These wishful thoughts vanished as, faster than she could perceive his movements, he was against her, pressing her body into the wall. The door slammed shut and the only indication he had moved at all was the click of the lock into place. Sylvia's body jerked at his sudden nearness, a moan stuck in her throat at the feel of his hard body against hers.

She had not taken another lover since he had left. There had been several prospects, sure, but she had always declined such offers the dim hope alive in her gut that he would return. His possessive nature, seemingly inherent in all vampires, was not something Sylvia had wanted to cross. Besides, she had doubted anyone else would ever be able to compare…

Her body, therefore, was much receptive to the touch of a male, despite how her rational mind warned her treacherous body of the mental repercussions that would ensue were anything to take place.

She swallowed hard as he placed a hand on either side of her head, her own hands braced with palms against the wall to her sides. His face was barely an inch away from her and her breathing accelerated as she realized one of his knees had nudged her legs apart just enough to rest between them. He was too close. Too familiar.

"Would you like me to leave, Miss Gilbert?" His voice was a husky whisper that danced across her ears and wound its way along her jaw. She shivered impulsively at the threat laced into his question and opened her mouth to respond when he covered it with his own, effectively ending any protest she could have made.

At first, the coldness of his inhuman lips on hers was shocking after so much time without it, but they instantly molded with and moved against hers. She tried to resist, she tried to remain still, but the moment his tongue snaked out to taste her, she melted. His chest was hard against hers as she opened her mouth to invite him in, his tongue dancing with hers in erotic movements. When she felt his hands glide over her hair onto her neck, she sighed into his mouth and he seemed to drink in the noise, his body pressing harder against hers, driving her back further against the wall.

This was bliss. This was heaven in a taste.

As he ravaged her mouth, she knew she should be protesting. She remembered that she was going to force him to leave. The questions about his past with her father niggled the back of her mind. But the cognac had fuzzed her brain and Damon's influence was unsurpassable.

"I need you. Now." His words were breathy demands against her jaw and she briefly felt a distended fang pressing against her flesh, before she was jerked forward into his arms and whisked down the hall and into her room faster than she could blink, let alone respond to his authoritative demeanor.

He threw her onto the bed and covered her body with his before she could bounce off the mattress from the impact. His hands seemed to be everywhere at once and she struggled to keep her grip on his back, pulling him against her, needing his touch more than anything else in that moment.

He pulled away from her long enough to rip her shirt over her head before his hands returned to the exploration of her body, his mouth finding the sensitive place directly behind and below her ear, and she knew her pulse would be pounding wildly against his lips.

"Now, that you don't have vervain in your blood…" His words trailed off and Sylvia tensed as she realized his intentions. She had only allowed Damon to feed from her twice and it had been years ago. Her blood seemed to affect him in a primal way, causing his baser instincts to rush to the forefront of his mind. It was a violent effect, yet another reason she had gotten into the habit of drinking vervain tea every morning.

"If you don't want me to, just say no."

She managed a nod. As if she was going to stop him…they had already come this far. If she was going to fraternize with the enemy, she may as well go all the way.

A groan escaped his throat at her acquiescence and she heard the very slight pop as his fangs extended. She held her breath, her heartbeat going out of control in anticipation of the sting. He leaned closer and she felt the first prick as the top layer of her skin was penetrated, but before he had pushed through to her veins he froze.

Sylvia lay panting beneath him, her hands clenched in the material of his shirt as she waited for him to do it, as her blood sang out to him.

"What are you do—"

He shushed her with a finger to her lips and then she heard it. Someone was knocking on her door. A male voice yelled out, but she couldn't make the words out over the rain pounding outside. Damon obviously heard, though, and his entire body tensed in recognition.

"Damon, who—"

She stopped herself this time as the arousal in his eyes blackened to anger and his fangs slid back into place. He rose from the bed in one fluid motion and tossed her shirt down to her. She blinked at the sudden change, disconcerted by the mirthless sneer that now adorned his face.

"You better get dressed, Sylvia. My brother's here.

And he's been dying to meet you."

* * *

A/N: Finally got this chapter done! Woo! -dances around- A lot of Damon/Sylvia interaction here and definitely more plot progression. I know that cliff hangers kinda suck, but I thought this was a good one. ;) I'll try not to take so long to get the next chapter up.

Read and review, please!

-Running


	3. Brothers

Chapter 3

_His brother?_

Sylvia slowly pulled her shirt back over her head, her body still reeling from the abruptness of Damon's sexual touch and equally abrupt departure. For a brief moment, she allowed her emotions to flow through her entire body. Grief, anger, fear, arousal, confusion, and betrayal sifted through her bones and nerve endings before she pushed it all out through her pores. It had taken a couple of hours to return, but Sylvia's common sense was rearing its head. Emotions were no good around vampires. She took a deep breath as she pushed off the bed and stepped quietly into the hallway.

Stefan Salvatore. Her mind was churning with the curiosity and apprehension she felt at his visit. She didn't know much about Damon's brother. Damon had regaled her with tales of the past from time to time throughout their relationship, but never spoke of his brother except in passing. All the stories she heard involved Damon and other people. Sometimes he mentioned Stefan was there, but he never elaborated on his character or their sibling relationship. It was odd, for certain, but Sylvia had secrets in her past she didn't want to discuss, so she never pressed the issue. From what she gathered, Stefan was just as mercurial as Damon, though his morals far out-reached his darker brother, for when Damon _did _speak of him, he spoke of how he refused to drink from humans – or even blood bags as Damon sometimes did – for fear of reverting to his humanity-less state.

Naturally, Sylvia wanted to meet him. How much did the Salvatore brothers have in common? Would they look alike? She touched her fingers softly to her neck where Damon's fangs had just been as her mind wandered. Would Stefan be so jaded towards life? Would his outlook be so cynical, so full of undirected spite? Maybe he was even worse than Damon. Maybe he had never been around because he hated his brother.

As her bare feet padded noiselessly towards the living room, Sylvia remembered suddenly the one story Damon had told her of his brother's darkest days…when he was known as "The Ripper." A cold chill shivered down her spine as the images flickered across her brain: a trail of bodies in the 1920s and a mentality that, according to Damon, his brother had since buried under years of grief and regret. When she had asked Damon if he had killed as many people as his brother, he had changed the topic.

Now, she knew better. Damon's darkness had returned and she could see in his eyes the deaths he was responsible for…the deaths he didn't regret in the slightest. Once, his indifference to human life had made her heart ache. When she had eventually gotten over the shock of his and other supernatural creatures' existences, and the fear that came along with such knowledge, she had wept for him. It had taken years, but she had finally broken through his icy exterior to the lonely, heart broken man underneath. She had never once asked what had caused him such pain. It was layered within him, etched into his very being. Those were his memories and his past – she had no part in them.

Still, once she finally got to know the beautiful soul that was Damon Salvatore, she had been on cloud nine. He was not perfect, she was not perfect, and their relationship was not perfect; but they had been happy. Her full lips turned down in a frown. Well, she had thought they were happy. Then he had run off with no word, no warning. Now…he was back. He was back and his walls were in place, his eyes were hardened against human emotion, and strangest of all, his brother had followed him.

Sylvia gained the entryway to her living room and paused just outside the doorframe as angry, hushed voices drifted out. She strained to hear their words over the continuous pounding of the rain.

"I told you I didn't want you anywhere near her."

That was Damon. Sylvia's eyebrows rose nearly into her hairline. She didn't know what she had expected, but for Damon to act so protective of her when he had left was not it. Ironically, Stefan seemed to wonder at the same thing as he asked the question that was forefront in Sylvia's own mind.

"If you care so much for her, why did you leave for so long, brother? Your actions and your words are not compatible."

Hm. Stefan's voice was much softer than Damon's and not quite as low-pitched. It was…warm. Almost. She had to stifle a snort at the thought of a vampire being warm.

"You know why I left."

Another pause before Stefan asked:

"Elena?"

Sylvia covered her mouth with a hand to smother her sharp intake of breath in shock. Her aunt? What did her aunt have to do with anything? She had been missing for so long…she brought her hand across her chest, gripping the skin of her arm until her fingers turned white. Nothing made sense. Damon knew her father. His brother knew her aunt. Sylvia's head was spinning with the implications of these revelations. Unless…maybe they were talking about a different Elena. It wasn't an extremely common name, but that made more sense than her aunt being connected to _vampires_.

Damon was silent. Sylvia wanted to scream with frustration. What did that silence mean? Was it affirmation? Had Damon left her to look for her aunt? Maybe some other woman? A thick, warm anger began to simmer in her chest. So many secrets…

"So, it's true then."

Another question from Stefan followed by more silence from Damon. What was going on? What were they _not_ saying? Was her aunt…alive? Impossible. She had disappeared without a trace. When someone disappeared from Mystic Falls, they turned up dead. Every. Time. If Damon knew something and hadn't told her… The anger burned hotter.

"What about Sylvia? Does she really look like her?"

"They could be twins."

So it _was_ her aunt. A twinge of pain twisted her heart a bit at this level of deception. She had lamented to Damon how sad she was at her aunt's sudden disappearance. He had been consoling…to a certain degree, certainly no more than she expected of him, or a vampire in general. Granted, she didn't have too many experiences with other vampires, but she figured they all worked along the same lines: mortal life was beneath them, regardless of how they had once been mortal themselves. It was like, in their new lives, the coils of mortality sprang free and their once friends and families died away as the vampires kept living. Eventually, they either wanted to stop caring about anyone but their own kind or they lost all sense of humanity, hardened by their immortality.

Sylvia shook her head and returned back to the present. It had been silent for far too long. So what if she looked like her aunt? Families usually had members that looked like one another. It was called _genes_. How could that possibly be significant to anything? And why would Damon's brother even care?

"Like Elena and Katherine…"

Katherine? She furrowed her brow in thought. Who was Katherine?

"So, she's a doppel-"

"_Stefan."_ Damon's tone was sharp, slicing through his brother's sentence. A doppel…what? Sylvia heard him clear his throat before he continued, "Yes, and now that your questions have been answered, _dear brother_, you can go on your merry way."

_That _was the Damon that Sylvia recognized. The sarcasm coating the false endearment was practically tangible. It had been an obvious dismissal. Would Stefan leave? If his stubbornness were anything like Damon's, he wouldn't, but Sylvia didn't know him and she'd be damned if she let Damon force his brother out of her own apartment before she could at least see what he looked like. Taking a deep breath and reinforcing her right to do what she wanted in her own flat, Sylvia straightened her spine, swallowed her fear, and stepped into the room.

At her entrance, Stefan slowly stood from the armchair he had been occupying, and stared at her with open shock evident in his eyes warring with some other emotion she couldn't place; it was gone too quickly. Sparing a quick glance for Damon, Sylvia noted his shoulders tense slightly as an exasperated sound expelled from his mouth. She knew he would be pissed, but she was beyond caring now. If Damon saw fit to leave her without an explanation, to sit there bold as brass on _her _couch in _her_ apartment talking to his brother about _her_ family and _her_ appearance, like hell was she going to hide in the hallway, behaving like a "good little girl," and let Damon's brother walk out that door when she finally had a chance to meet him, to place another puzzle piece into its spot in the strange mosaic that was Damon Salvatore.

Damon gestured from her to Stefan. "Stefan, Sylvia. Sylvia, this is my brother, Stefan." As soon as the introductions were finished, Damon took a long drink from the glass in his hand, studiously staring ahead at the wall. Sylvia made a mental note that she would have to restock her liquor cabinet after this visit, and possibly her furniture if Damon's temper was going to get out of hand. She could practically feel the waves of anger rolling off of him. What was he so mad about? Why was it such a horrible thing for her to meet his brother? It just didn't make any sense. Even if they did hate each other, which she could tell was certainly going on – the tension in the room was so high she couldn't believe the roof hadn't blown off – that didn't mean he had to hide his…what was she anyway? Surely they weren't still dating after such a disappearance, were they?

She filed that confusion away for later study as Stefan began to move.

"Sylvia," he said and she turned her eyes to him as he walked slowly to her, took her hand in his, and bent forward slightly in a strangely formal bow before pressing his lips gently to her knuckles for the briefest of moments. She felt more than heard the soft inhalation of his nostrils as he took in her scent. It was a slightly awkward sensation, but not totally unexpected. Damon had shown her on more than one occasion how intoxicating the smell of blood could be to a vampire and how they could learn to identify a person by their unique scent if they were witness to it often enough. Sylvia had likened it to canine's walking around sniffing each other's asses. Damon hadn't been too amused at the imagery.

Still, she was slightly conscientious at the vampiric custom as she was fully aware that she must reek of arousal and be coated with Damon's scent. She didn't mind too much, but would his brother? Should she even care? Stefan didn't seem to mind, regardless. He straightened and looked her unabashedly in the face, a guileless look of innocent curiosity in his eyes. She knew he was studying her, and she took advantage of the opportunity to inspect the other Salvatore brother.

They were dramatically different. Where Damon was all darkness, Stefan was all light; Damon's hair was black as pitch while Stefan's was a soft dusting of brown; Damon's eyes, though a bright shade of blue, were full of an artistic brooding that served to underscore the shadows within; Stefan, though it was apparent he, too, had dealt with much grief, had a bright and genuine quality to his warm, maple irises. It was a startling contrast and a bit unnerving.

Realizing she had been silent for too long, she murmured, "Nice to meet you." Great. It was her first meeting with Damon's brother and she was already coming off as a vapid girl. Stefan didn't seem to think so, though, as his mouth turned up in a pleasant smile. His hand on hers was soft and somehow inviting. Her eyes remained locked on his and she blinked at the warm oaken color that met her gaze, so different from Damon's ice.

She didn't want to look away. She felt…safe. She felt like she could open herself up to Stefan and not worry that he would deceive her…use her. She_ wanted_ to open herself up. It was as easy as breathing to allow him into her mind…

Sylvia blinked, momentarily shocked, as a rush of air blew her hair around her face. What…?

She looked around, startled to see Damon, his arm tight against his brother's throat as he held him against the wall. Stefan didn't even struggle, though his eyes were darker than they had been a moment ago. His eyes…

Compulsion.

Dammit, she was sick of vampires and their tricks. Why had she thought one Salvatore would be different than the other? That was pure folly on her part. They might look different, but they were obviously the same devious, self-serving bastards on the inside, ultimately caring about no one but themselves. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, warding off the disappointment that threatened to rise up and recreated her shield of anger instead.

"What do you think you're playing at, Stefan?" It was obvious that Damon wasn't any more pleased than Sylvia at his brother's lack of personal space. That was good, at least.

"No harm done, Damon. I was just curious." Stefan seemed rather unperturbed that his brother was practically choking him out in a strange woman's apartment. He certainly didn't sound angry or deceitful. He sounded like he really was just curious. That didn't give him any right to pry inside her head, but at least he wasn't raving mad and foaming at the mouth, as Damon would have her believe. He was calm and controlled. Sylvia knew, though, that sometimes Damon was his most dangerous when he was silent. A vampire was a disastrous thing to underestimate.

With a sound that could only be described as a snarl, Damon pressed his forearm harder against Stefan's throat and Sylvia swore she heard the wall creak in protest at the force. She opened her mouth to tell Damon to watch it, but closed it abruptly as Damon turned his head towards her, his eyes burning with bright, blue fire. There was no mistaking that glare. _Keep your mouth shut._

Sylvia blinked once, twice, and finally Damon put his face in his brother's once more and released her from his stare. Shit he was pissed. "Always on the quest for more knowledge." His mouth twisted into a sneer. "Well, did you find whatever it was you were looking for?" As suddenly as he had attacked, Damon released his brother and turned on his heel, stalking back to the coffee table and grabbing the remains of his drink, downing it in one go. This was going to be a bad, bad night.

Sylvia turned her suspicious gaze on Stefan as he coughed once and pulled at his shirt, straightening the seams. He held his hands up in the classic gesture of surrender and said in a rather contrite voice, "Yes. I did." The slightly shorter Salvatore brother turned towards Sylvia. "Sorry, Miss Gilbert. I just had to know."

She raised an eyebrow. A vampire apologizing? She wasn't even going to touch that. "Know…what…exactly?" How could he possibly have gotten anything from her mind, anyway? It felt like just a few seconds had passed under his gaze. That wasn't enough time to know anything from anyone, even if the seeker _was_ a vampire.

Damon barked out a mirthless laugh causing Sylvia to wince. "He wanted to know if you were _mine._" Sylvia's breath caught. She didn't even know the answer to that… She carefully studied Damon's face for clues to what he wanted from her, but his face was – as ever – unreadable. "He wanted to know if you had seen your aunt in the past eleven years. Never mind that he could have just _asked_ like normal people."

Careful to leave her face blank, Sylvia allowed her mind to churn over this new information. It shouldn't matter to Stefan if she was with his brother or not. He didn't know her from Eve. They had never even met and she had figured Stefan didn't even know she existed. However, seeking that knowledge made more sense than wanting to know if Sylvia had seen her aunt. It had been eleven years since her death and she had been brought up more times in this one night than in the past decade. That wasn't to say Sylvia never thought of her aunt, or that she didn't miss her every single day, but her father studiously refused to mention her and Sylvia hadn't been bursting with the desire to talk about her.

She blinked as she realized they were both staring at her as if they expected her to randomly break out into song and dance. Her eyes flickered back and forth between the two brothers, day and night. Finally, she just couldn't stand the awkward silence anymore.

"What?!"

Stefan looked curiously at his brother before heaving a heavy sigh. "You didn't tell her." It wasn't a question. When Damon said nothing, Stefan nodded once in an eerily finite manner. Sylvia looked accusingly at Damon. Why was it that he always kept her in the dark? She wasn't the bravest person, maybe, but she was smart and she could handle just about anything at this point, considering all the other random shit she'd put up with and discovered in her young life. Even in their "good" days, Damon had remained closed up and secretive. It didn't seem to matter what the topic was, he thought he knew what was best for Sylvia and constantly reminded her of that by making decisions for her and leaving her out of the loop on most things. It hadn't bothered her much then, to be honest. She never felt like anything important had been missed out on. Now, though, when there were new characters on the board and the stakes were rising, she would not let Damon play her hand in her stead.

"What?" she asked again, slightly calmer this time. "What did you not tell me, Damon?"

Damon smacked his lips together as if that last drink of liquor had been delicious. Naturally, he was reverting back to his "skate through difficult conversations by being an ass" method. He brushed past her as he made his way back to the liquor cabinet, leaving tingles of sensation on her shoulder where they had barely touched. The clank of bottles nearly drowned out his reply, but he raised his voice just enough, "Only things you don't want to know, Sylvia."

That gave her pause. Yes, Damon was insufferable at times and he had the tendency to make decisions for her that she was more than capable of making. In fact, a lot of the time he could be down right obnoxious, but never in their entire relationship had he done something to deliberately hurt her or put her in a position where she could be hurt. Well, until he had left, but that was the only exception. If Damon thought it was so bad, maybe she _didn't_ want to know.

No. This was her life. She would not choose to remain blindly in the dark, blissfully unaware of what was going on around her. When Damon re-entered with enough glasses for all of them, she took a cup silently and sat heavily onto the couch, not looking at either of them. She took a sip and grimaced. He had gone for the whiskey. She gripped her cup with both hands and stared into the deep brown liquid. What was the worse they could tell her…that her aunt was dead? She had assumed that years ago.

"Okay," she said slowly, thinking carefully over each word before she let it past her teeth. "So you both know my aunt Elena." It hadn't been a question, but there were noncommittal answers of assent from each Salvatore. She nodded once to herself. Right. What was she supposed to do with that knowledge? Steeling her nerves, she soldiered on. "And, Damon, you left me to go look for her?"

Silence.

Another twist of her heart sent pain through her being. She closed her eyes shut tightly, clasping her hands tightly around her glass. With Damon, silence was always _yes_. "I don't understand," she finally managed. That was the understatement of the century. She felt like she was drowning in a sea of turmoil, each wave battering her more thoroughly than the last, leaving her drained and lost.

"Damon has done what he's always done, Sylvia," Stefan said. "Instead of informing you of events that could, and have, affect you, he has taken it upon himself to go diving head first into things he doesn't fully understand yet. He's being the same selfish person he has always been."

Sylvia's mouth fell open with a little 'pop.' Never in her life had she ever thought someone would speak about Damon so negatively and hostilely while in his presence. She swung her gaze across the room to where Damon was standing, leaning casually against the side of her bookcase as if he had not a care in the world. To her surprise, he was actually smiling.

"Oh, Stefan. You consistently speak of things you know nothing about."

"Do I?" Sylvia's gaze flickered to Stefan as he gestured with his glass, his jaw set in determination, a humorless smile decorating his lips. "So, then, why are you treating her the same way you treated Elena? Do you think she likes when you take away her choices?"

It was like watching a tennis match. Sylvia's head continued to bounce back and forth between the two men in her living room as she struggled to follow their verbal game. Damon pushed himself off the bookcase with his shoulder and slowly moved closer to his brother, his gait brimming with confidence and an air of being right.

"Really? Really, Stefan? After everything that Elena went through because of your desire to make her happy by letting her choose her own, disastrous path, keeping in mind how safe she would have stayed had anyone _listened _to me, you're _still_ going to come waltzing in here touting your morale crap and try to tell me how wrong I am?" Sylvia's eyes grew wider and wider at this argument. Slowly, she was able to piece together what had caused the rift in their brotherhood.

"You _are_ wrong, Damon," Stefan said, advancing towards his brother. "Making mistakes, getting hurt, these are all parts of a normal, human life." He pointed a finger at Sylvia and she instinctively tried to sink farther into the couch cushions. She wanted no part of this. "Do you think she appreciates that sort of archaic behavior?"

Damon threw his head back and laughed. "At least she's still _alive_."

Silence descended in the room and suddenly the rain outside sounded deafening. Sylvia desperately wanted to drown herself in her glass, but was too afraid of that tension to move. The knowledge that her aunt was dead washed over her without much effect. She had already figured that. Having it confirmed didn't do much to disturb her. It had been eleven years. Time healed all wounds, eventually. No, what shocked her most was the look of pain on Stefan's face and the absolute, bitter hatred in Damon's voice. She could easily tell how much they had both cared for her aunt, and that was what truly floored her.

As the seconds ticked by with no reply from Stefan except the thickening pain in his eyes, Sylvia began to wonder what Damon was even doing with her. Was he only with her because she looked like her aunt? Was he trying to make amends for her death somehow by keeping watch over her niece? Did he have no true feeling for her? Her heart stung more and more with each question.

Damon broke the silence by draining his glass and crashing it down onto the table. Sylvia's eyes flickered up to his face, but he didn't even glance at her. He was staring daggers at his brother. Such hatred…had Stefan been to blame for her aunt's death? Is that why Damon was always so controlling and demanding? She never really cared. Her life had been so unpredictable that having someone take control of most of it was kind of nice. Maybe her aunt had resisted that kind of treatment and Stefan had given her freedom of choice that Damon denied. Maybe her choices had led to her death. Yes, that would explain it.

But if she was dead…why had Damon gone to look for her?

She narrowed her eyes as she searched his face, but he was resolutely _not_ looking at her. "Maybe you should just leave," he said, all hint of mocking humor gone from his voice. Before Stefan could answer, Sylvia interjected.

"If she's dead, why did you go looking for her, Damon?" She forced the question out quickly before she could rethink interrupting anything.

Stefan looked warily at Damon as he turned to regard her, his face once again rid of all visual clues to his intentions. For a minute, she didn't think he was going to answer her. She began to wither under his scrutinizing stare.

Slowly, as if her was judging her ability to comprehend his words, Damon said, "Your aunt isn't dead, Sylvia. Not technically, anyway."

Not dead? Hope blossomed in her chest. She had never thought she would get to see Aunt Elena again. This was great! But if she was alive…why did they both look so unbearably sad? She replayed Damon's words again in her head. _Not technically, anyway…_

But if she wasn't _technically_ dead…

Then Damon confirmed her devastating thought. "Elena is a vampire."

Sylvia felt the world fall away under her feet. Her aunt was a…? No. There was no way. How had that happened? Her father's fears and insanity all made sense. He must have known. He must have been glamoured so many times to erase her. She was a huge part of his life and erasing her true demise, implanting a false death in its place, must have done irreparable damage to his brain. _Damn them._ Damn them all!

Stefan cleared his throat and Sylvia looked up at him, tears brimming in her eyes, threatening to fall despite her upmost desire to not cry in front of either of these _creatures_. "She's not _just_ a vampire, Sylvia," he said, regret and sorrow shadowing his voice.

"She's also a vampire _hunter_."

* * *

A/N: Finally got this chapter finished! It is so much fun to write the dialogue between Stefan and Damon. So much brotherly animosity! Anyway, hope you liked it. Read and review please! :D

-Running


	4. Revelations

"She's not just a vampire.

She's a vampire hunter."

Stefan's words echoed around in Sylvia's head over and over, but she still could not make sense of them.

"She's a…she's…what?" She couldn't catch her breath. Her heart was pounding so fast. She brought a hand up to her chest, trying to make sure it stayed inside her skin despite its battering against her rib cage.

"Christ, Stefan, did you have to just say it like that?" Her eyelids fluttered as Damon knelt in front of her, his cool hands framing her face. He spread his fingers across her cheeks and tilted her head up, forcing her to meet his gaze. She blinked rapidly as his face swam in and out of focus.

"Sylvia. Sylvia, look at me." She shook her head and closed her eyes, feeling a warm, salty tear escape. This was too much. It was just too much. She couldn't comprehend it. Her mind rebelled against the very thought of her aunt being a vampire. A vampire that hunts vampires.

"Sylvia!" Damon shook her head gently. She opened her mouth to tell him to leave her alone, but as soon as she parted her lips, a sob choked out. She swallowed hard and opened her eyelids. The floor of her apartment was swimming in the shallow pool of unshed tears that welled up against her lower lids. Slowly, she lifted her gaze to meet Damon's icy blue stare. "Listen to me, Sylvia," he said, his voice soft and easy in her ears. "Are you listening?" She nodded once, her breath hitching in her chest as she held back another sob. "Everything is going to be okay." His thumb stroked her cheek, wiping away the trail of the solitary tear that rolled down her face. Her eyes flicked between both of his, searching for certainty, to see if he truly believed that. She found nothing but blue.

"Don't lie to her, Damon," Stefan said, a sad sigh in his words. Damon ignored him, his gaze never leaving Sylvia's. She shook her head back and forth against his palms.

"Why…" she sniffed and tried again when her voice started to break. "Why didn't you t-tell me?" The betrayal cut deeply. He had known how much she had missed her aunt. Elena had helped Jeremy raise her, had lived with them for all of Sylvia's childhood. She had been a second mother to her, always there when she needed a friend. Her loss had torn out a part of Sylvia's heart. It was true that she didn't often talk about her, but Damon knew it was because it was just too painful to do so, and yet…he hadn't told her anything.

She was all too aware of her pain glimmering in her eyes, but she couldn't hide it if she tried. She didn't want to. Damon may not love her like she thought he did – how could he leave and lie if he loved her – but surely she meant enough to him for some sort of regret to pull at his heartstrings.

Damon let out an exasperated breath. His hands tightened briefly on her face before he released her and stood, stepping away and running a hand through his hair, causing dark strands to stick up in random places. On anyone else, it would look silly and messy. On Damon, it only added to his handsome features. It was enough to make her sick. He shouldn't look that good and be such a huge dick. Sylvia's accusing stare followed him as he picked up his glass and took another drink. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand before leveling his gaze at her.

"I didn't tell you, Sylvia, because of this reaction right here. Knowing that your aunt is a psycho vampire killer isn't going to make life any easier." The back of her hand flew to her mouth to stifle another sob. Her aunt was psycho. Her aunt was a psycho vampire. She repeated these truths to herself over and over like a sick mantra, but they never sounded true. They didn't even sound remotely plausible. She took a deep, steadying breath and wiped her fingers underneath her eyes, stopping the tears before they could fall. So many things didn't make sense and she had so many questions.

"If she kills vampires, then why did you go looking for her, Damon? Why wouldn't you just stay away from her?"

At this, Damon turned and regarded his brother. Stefan's face was full of so much remorse that it sent little shocks of pain through Sylvia's body. What had he gone through that had affected him so deeply?

"Elena doesn't want to kill us," Stefan answered. "Not yet, anyway." Sylvia looked at him, her brow furrowed and her head tilted to one side in confusion.

"But if she's a vampire hunter, why wouldn't she want to kill you?"

"She's got bigger fish to fry right now," said Damon. "Big, nasty fish with sharp teeth."

Sylvia looked back and forth between them, at the tension that ratcheted up several notches. "Who?"

Stefan took a deep breath, looked down into his glass of liquor, and said, "Hybrids."

Slightly shaky, Sylvia stood up from the couch, her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection. She felt too full of emotion to be able to sit still any longer. She ran a hand through her long, wavy locks in a reflex move, allowing the curtain of hair to fall in front of her face, partially hiding her from view. _Hybrids?_ As if vampires and vampire killers weren't enough…

"Okay…so what's a hybrid? I'm assuming you don't mean the car." If tonight was going to be full of shocking information, she might as well swallow down her sadness and pain until it was all said and done. She wanted answers. She _deserved_ answers.

"Hybrids. Half-vampire and half-werewolf, but not bound by the weakness of either species alone." Damon raised his glass like he was toasting before draining the last of it and heading, once again, back to the liquor cabinet. Sylvia watched him go, her mind whirring and taking the news of werewolves in stride.

"Not bound by weaknesses? What does he mean?" she asked Stefan.

"Most vampires burn in the sun," he said.

"Yes, I know. Damon told me about the daylight ring. So hybrids don't burn?"

Stefan shook his head. "Nope. They don't burn in the sun and they aren't forced to change during a full moon."

"Unfortunately," Damon said as he strolled back into the room, the liquor bottle in one hand and his glass in the other, "their bite is still poison to us regular, ol' vampires." He set the bottle down with a clack on the table and refilled his and Sylvia's glasses.

"Sounds like you've dealt with them before," she noted.

Stefan nodded and Damon grimaced. "Oh yeah, we've dealt with them before," he said wryly. "Several times, none of them ending too well." The brothers shared a look. It was the first time since they'd both been here that one didn't look ready to kill the other. Sylvia figured that sharing a terrible past like theirs must do something for the brotherly bond.

"Hang on. If their bite is poison to vampires, why doesn't Elena just let them live? Wouldn't that raise the chances of them biting vampires?" She pointed out logically.

"Yes, and no," said Stefan. "Technically, they are vampires, so she'll hunt them down regardless, but they're proving to be a bit more of a problem than the rest of the vampire population right now, so Elena is focusing all her energy on eradicating their species."

Sylvia bent over to pick up her refilled glass before she leveled her gaze at Damon once more. "Then why did you go find her? She's a vampire hunter, she's chasing after a creature that can kill you, and you sound like you don't want anything to do with her. Why go looking for her?" She tilted up her glass and drained half of it in one swig, the warmth of the whiskey sliding down her throat and settling comfortably in her stomach. Might as well get a bit of a buzz, anything to help her deal with this crap.

"Weeeell, it's not that simple," he said. "You see, Elena found me first."

At that, Sylvia froze. Her aunt had contacted her then-boyfriend, but hadn't bothered to say hi to Sylvia herself? To let her know she was alive? Why had Elena let her entire family think she was dead for eleven years? She saw, out of the corner of her eye, Stefan press his lips together and grip his glass a little more firmly. Interesting. Fighting down every other question she wanted to hurl at Damon and choking back her "human" emotions, she asked, "Why did she find you?"

Again, Damon's gaze flickered quickly to his brother. If Sylvia hadn't been scrutinizing him so closely, she would have missed it. "She needed my help with…something," he hedged. Stefan's jaw clenched. Sylvia pointed a finger accusingly at Damon.

"Oh, no. You are not going to slide by my questions. Not this time. What did she want your help with, Damon?" Damon stared at her, sizing her up. She straightened her spine and looked him right in the eye. She may be hurting, but she was not going to crumble in front of these two. No way. She was stronger than that. He continued to stare at her as he lifted his glass and took a drink, his eyes boring into her over the rim. He swallowed, made a sighing sound of satisfaction, and brought the cup down.

"She wanted me to help her find an old acquaintance."

Sylvia had a feeling that he was leaving a big something out, but she ignored the elephant in the room and looked back at Stefan. He drained his glass and turned on his heel, walking out of the room. Sylvia's eyes flicked down to the liquor bottle still sitting on the table before returning to Stefan's retreating back. There was definitely more going on than anyone was admitting aloud. Never one for tactful conversation, Sylvia asked, "What's wrong with Stefan?"

Damon's gaze followed hers to the kitchen where his brother had disappeared. A smirk lifted half of his mouth, his gaze dancing with a dark comedy. "Ah, well, he's just a bit jealous."

"Jealous?"

"We've had some, ah,_ issues_ in the past regarding your aunt and that old acquaintance I mentioned. I believe dear Stefan is confused as to why I was sought after and not him."

Sylvia chewed on her tongue, her mind furiously working to make sense of all this. "When you say 'issues' do you mean…?" She trailed off, the dawning horror hitting her brain. "No… Tell me you didn't."

Damon only smiled a self-satisfied smirk and took another swig from the glass. Stefan chose that stellar moment to reenter the conversation. "Yes, Sylvia, it's exactly what you think. It wasn't too long ago that your brother and myself were contesting for Elena's affections." Stefan's voice didn't hold any of the smugness in Damon's. He seemed genuinely sorry that Sylvia was in the middle of this mess, even though he had brought all this to light by showing up at her apartment. She wondered, though, if she would be able to stay away if someone she once loved, and still loved, was contacting her brother and not her. What kind of feelings must that rouse? She studied Stefan carefully. His fingers were still wrapped a bit too tightly around the glass, his shoulders stiff like he was prepared to defend himself against a verbal or physical attack at a moment's notice. His eyes were shadowed with a sadness that he couldn't seem to keep at bay, regret so evident it was practically written across his face. Then she looked back at Damon. His posture was loose, relaxed, like he didn't have a care in the world. Still, the tenderness with which he had cupped her face and the way he had brought her back from the spiraling edge of depression so earnestly said otherwise. What was he after? What game was he playing? This was all so…wrong.

"Let me get this straight," she said slowly, taking a deep breath, "you," she turned her body towards Damon, "used to be in love with my aunt. You both did." She saw Stefan nod out of the corner of her eye; Damon remained absolutely impassive. She took another breath, trying to calm down, but anger and betrayal exploded out of her. "You sick, perverted _bastard!_" She hurled her glass at Damon's face, growling under her breath when he effortlessly ducked under it as it exploded against the wall, the remnants of her whiskey dripping down the painted paneling to the floor. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as she'd hoped it would be. "You couldn't get your girl so you go after her niece? Is that it? That is so…. disgusting!"

She didn't wait for a reaction. She made a scream-y noise of frustration and overwhelming misery and stormed for the door. When he blurred to block her exit, she pulled her arm back and punched him right in the nose. His head jerked back into the door but he grabbed her fist before she could retract it, all the same.

"Dammit, Sylvia, would you just wait a second?!"

"No, Damon, I won't!" She tried to pull her fist from his grasp, but he was far too strong. He brought his other hand up and rubbed at his nose. She couldn't believe she hadn't even bruised it. "You're sick! You're a sick pervert. How could you…how could you even _touch_ me knowing that you slept with my aunt!" She narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm assuming you _did_ sleep with her?" He was silent. She looked over at Stefan and he pointedly looked away. Her jaw dropped open in disgust. "You _both_ have?!"

She tried again to pull her arm free but Damon held fast. He shook his head back and forth like he was trying to clear a headache and then he stared at her, his eyes flashing dangerously. "Stop. Just stop trying to get away. This is _not_ a good time for you to be going outside alone." She paused in her futile attempts and glared up at him.

"Why do you even care what happens to me?"

"I care."

She blinked, her anger still seething under her skin. "I don't believe you."

He sighed heavily. "Stefan, do you mind?" he said, nodding his head towards the door as he pulled Sylvia to the side. Stefan sighed and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, but he nodded and twisted the doorknob, pulling the door open just enough to slip through.

"Sure, brother. Just make it quick. We don't have a whole lot of time to wait around, mending relationships." A gust of cold wind pressed its way inside before he could close the door. Sylvia shivered delicately, before remembering what was going on. She shoved her hands hard against Damon's chest and he finally let her go, causing her to stumble backwards in the sudden freedom.

"Ouch!" She felt a sting in the bottom of her foot just as the back of her knees collided with the coffee table. She tumbled down onto it, barely catching herself before she slid off the other side. Huffing in frustration and embarrassment she pulled her left foot up into her lap. Great. She had stepped on a piece of the broken liquor glass. Wasn't that just perfect.

"I'll take care of it," Damon said. She looked up as he walked over to her, his shoes crunching over the shards. He sat down beside her on the table, his eyes staring intently at her foot, watching her blood well up to the surface before dripping down the arch and off her heel to the floor. Her eyes darted to his face and she stilled. His eyes turned red, all around them darkening. His fangs slid out and she gasped, but he only brought his own wrist up to his mouth and sunk his fangs in, his blood soon falling with hers to the floor, the shades of red combining into one.

When he lifted his wrist up to her mouth, she parted her lips without hesitation, remembering several times in the past when she had fed from him for various reasons, usually during sexual relations. But this time she paused and her eyes sought his. Why should she drink from him? That was an intimate thing between them, or at least it had been. How could she so easily fall back into this pattern? He frowned at her, his fangs popping back up into place. "What?" he asked, exasperated.

"I can just get a band aid," she muttered, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Why should you offer your blood to me considering all that's happened?"

He dropped his wrist as flesh knitted back together over the puncture marks. "Do you think I feel differently about you now?"

She nodded. "You left," she said simply.

"Of course I left, Sylvia," he said as if it was all obvious. "When there are packs of hybrids looming all around and the one person who is actively working to take them all down wants your help, you don't really say no."

" Why couldn't you have just told me, Damon?" She felt like she was repeating herself. "And spare me the 'you can't handle it' bit, okay? Believe it or not, I'm actually capable of handling myself."

"I know you can, but do you think this is something I wanted to talk about?"

"It doesn't matter. She's my _aunt_, Damon, and you just kept all of your knowledge about her hidden away from me. That's not right, no matter what your past with her is." She shook her head, still having a hard time dealing with that disturbing piece of information.

"That was a long time ago, Sylvia. Your father was still in high school when your aunt and I were…whatever we were."

She held her hand up, stopping his excuses. "I don't care. You still should have told me. I've thought for the past eleven years that she was gone, dead. You didn't bother telling me that she's a vampire? How did something like that even happen?" She eyed him suspiciously. "Did you or Stefan turn her?"

"This is ridiculous," he said and he bit into his wrist again. "Just drink so your foot will stop bleeding. Stefan doesn't need to be around that and he's right – we've got no time to sit here." He scowled as she continued to just stare at him. "I'll answer _some_ of your questions on the way, but we've got to leave. The sooner the better. Now, drink." He pushed his wrist up to her mouth and she sighed with resignation before wrapping her hands around his forearm, his muscles rippling underneath her fingers as she pressed her lips against his skin.

She pressed her tongue against the bite mark first, the taste of his blood sweet and slightly tangy in her mouth. Then she began to suck, pulling with her throat to bring more blood to the surface. She heard a soft groan and Damon wrapped his other arm around her, pulling her into his lap. His hand rested gently on her head, his fingers trailing through her hair. A pang of guilt went through her as she allowed herself to relax and enjoy his gentle caresses. She knew blood sharing like this was intimate between a vampire and a human, and that it generally felt really good for the vampire, depending on the connection with the other person, but it felt incredible for her, too. It was almost like Damon was inside her – not in a sexual sense – like he was filling her up from the inside out. His presence flowing into her with every swallow. She shouldn't be sitting here and enjoying this, not after all she had just learned. But she couldn't stop. She had missed him, more than she had even let on to herself.

The strange tingle of the cut healing in her foot interrupted her peace. She lifted her mouth, a drop of his blood rolling down onto her chin. She wiped it up with a finger and then stuck the finger in her mouth to lick it off. Her cheeks reddened with a blush as she realized Damon was staring rather intently at her. She struggled to find the previous rage and was slightly relieved when it came rushing back on demand.

"There," she said, clearing her throat. She pushed herself up off the table, choosing to ignore the way Damon's hand slid down her hair to her back as she stood. "You better get going. Stefan's probably tired of waiting." Damon raised an eyebrow and stood as well.

"You're coming, too."

A small shiver went through her at the unintended double entendre of his statement. She wasn't going anywhere with him and his brother. "Whatever your business is with Elena, you can leave me out of it. You seem to want to do that anyway." She turned and made to go into her bedroom, her plan to lock the door and keep the world away for a few hours. Naturally, Damon reached the doorframe before she could and blocked her exit.

"Things have changed. We can't just leave you here."

"Why?" she challenged. "It's not like any vampires can come in. All I have to do is not open my door and voila! No problem."

He sighed like he was pacifying a toddler. "What, like you're just going to stay in here until it's all done?" He snorted in disbelief. " I doubt that. Besides, it doesn't matter. We need you." He grabbed her by the arm and bodily pulled her along with him. She dug her heels into the floor, but it made no difference.

"Wait a minute! What do you 'need' me for? Where are we even going? Don't I need a bag?"

"So many questions." Damon shook his head. "No. You put on your shoes and go outside. Stefan will walk you to my car. I'll get your things packed. I'll be quicker anyway." Then he blurred down the hallway. She heard him opening drawers as she shoved her feet into her slip on vans. This was obnoxious, but it looked like she didn't really have a choice. She stepped to the table, grabbed Damon's glass, drained it, and then walked out the door, nearly running into Stefan who was literally just beyond it.

She saw his nostrils flare before she shut the door. _The blood._ She quickly pulled it closed. A gust of wind hit her full in the face and her eyes opened in shock as she took in the storm that was now raging all around. The trees were bending over in the gale and she grabbed onto the railing, afraid of being pushed over the side. The wind whipped her hair back and forth violently and rain pelted underneath the awning, trying to soak her to the bone. Chill bumps raced across her skin.

"Where's your jacket?" Stefan asked loudly over the wind. She shivered as she realized she had completely forgotten it inside. Stefan was only wearing a t-shirt and jeans and she opened her mouth to ask where his was until she remembered that vampires didn't feel cold. She added that to her mental "why I hate vampires" list and scowled.

"It's right inside on the coat hanger." He opened the door and she reached out to touch his arm, "Get the hoodie!" He looked down at her hand on his arm before looking her in the eyes, some emotion stirring there. Sylvia momentarily lost herself in the golden hue of his irises. She jerked her hand off of his cool skin. _Sorry_, she mouthed, though she had no idea what she was even apologizing for. People touched other people's arms all the time. Stefan smiled a soft, sad smile and shook his head before disappearing inside, leaving the door open. He was only gone for a split second, but when he came back out his expression was decidedly different.

Wordlessly, he handed her the hoodie and she pulled it over her head, grateful for the warmth and, more importantly, the pack of cigarettes and lighter she had left in the pocket. Her fingers slightly trembling she pulled out a cigarette and put it up to her lips. She held the pack out to Stefan but he shook his head. She shrugged and brought the lighter up to the tip, shielding it as best she could with her hand.

Flick. The flame sputtered out. Flick. She got it to the tip, but it went out. Flick. Sparks. Dammit!

Stefan took the lighter from her hand and moved up close to her, blocking the wind with his body. She looked up at him as he flicked the lighter, the flame rising high in one try and held it up to her cigarette. Was that some kind of Salvatore talent? She inhaled, pulling the fire into the tobacco and releasing a small puff of smoke. When he handed her the lighter back, their fingers grazed and Sylvia swore she felt a small shock. She looked back into his eyes as she pulled her cigarette from between her lips, her breath left her body in a rush. The whites of his eyes weren't white; they were red.

He took another step towards her, the veins around his eyes darkening. She made to take a step back but her foot slipped on the wet metal of the stairs. Stefan's hand flashed out and grabbed her wrist, halting her mid-fall. He pulled her back up, his chest suddenly pressing lightly against hers. She looked up into his face and saw the struggle behind his eyes, clear as day. He shuddered and released her arm, stepping back and away from her. His mouth opened like he was a fish on land, grasping for air but drowning all the same. The rain quickly drenched him from head to toe as he stepped from beneath the small cover from the awning, but he stood, facing away from her, his hands gripping the rail tightly, letting the water soak him through and through.

She watched him. What had happened? He was fine one minute and then…she gasped and brought her hand up to her forehead. Her blood. She had sent him into the apartment to get her jacket when there was a pool of her blood on the floor.

_Hurry up, Damon…_ She brought a shaky hand up to her mouth and took another puff of the cigarette. After several long minutes, the door opened and Damon emerged holding a duffel bag full of her things. He cocked an eyebrow as he looked between Stefan's rain-drenched form and Sylvia's shaky hands. She shook her head back and forth and silently pointed at the blood still visible from the open door. Damon looked back and nodded, a grim smile on his face.

"Road trip, anyone?"

Sylvia scowled at his tactless attempt to break the awkward silence. She took a last drag from her cigarette before flicking it out into the wet grass somewhere. She reached inside to turn off the light before locking and shutting the door. When she turned back around, Stefan was gone.

"Allow me," Damon said and he scooped her up and ran to the car with vampiric speed. Before she could blink, Sylvia was thrown into the front seat her bag deposited behind her. She turned around but Stefan was nowhere to be seen. Damon saw her eyes searching as he climbed into the driver's seat, quickly deducing her confused look. "Stefan will be meeting us there." He started the car and put it in reverse, but paused with one hand behind her head rest, his body turned halfway around to back out of the drive. His eyes traveled up and down her form, assessing. "You okay?" Sylvia blinked and looked over at him.

"I will be." She took a deep breath. "So, where are we going?"

Damon smiled a sarcastic smile as he turned his gaze back to the rear window and pressed down on the gas, his car shooting out of the driveway and into the street. "My favorite place in the world."

"Where is that?"

"Mystic Falls, Sylvia. We're going back to Mystic Falls."


	5. Doppelganger

_"No...no we didn't find her."_

_"What do you mean you didn't find her? You said you had a lead in Georgia!"_

_"It was a dead end. The trail went cold. We aren't even sure if she's still-"_

_"Don't say it. Don't you dare say it. My sister isn't...she can't be..."_

_"Jeremy, it'll be alright. We'll keep look-"_

_"Just go! Bonnie, just go. I can't...I can't handle this right now."_

_Sylvia stood in the shadows of the living room, the moon outside the window barely making enough light to see by. She watched in silence as her father fell to his knees in the foyer, sobbing quietly into his hands. The slight form of Bonnie, an old friend of the family, walking down the sidewalk to her car was the only movement out on this sad night. She wrapped her hands around her body, shivering though it was warm enough in the house. Her aunt was gone. She knew they wouldn't find her. No one ever turned up alive once they disappeared from Mystic Falls. All the animal attacks lately had proven that over and over._

_She didn't know how long she stood there, her father crying his heart out in solitude. She wanted to go to him. Her heart ached with the same sadness she knew he felt. That loss. That horrible certainty. But she couldn't bring herself to take those few steps, or to even let him know she was there. It was bad enough that she was intruding on what he thought was a private moment of grieving. He was always so strong, so giving – sacrificing himself for her and her siblings every time. She wouldn't take this moment away from him._

_Eventually, he rose to his feet and walked up the stairs. She heard the quiet sound of his bedroom door latching and she finally moved from her spot by the window. Pinks were beginning to glow on the horizon. A single tear fell from her eye, glistening in the rising sun. It was a mockery of happiness. The world would be a little darker for the rest of her life - her aunt's absence forever felt._

_A knock at the door broke her out of her reverie. Strange. She hadn't seen anyone approach the door; there was no car in the road. She sniffled, wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and walked up to the door. _

_"Ah, Miss Gilbert. I've been looking for you."_

_Her heart leapt into her throat as she opened the door. She was looking straight into eyes of the strangest gold, set in an extremely handsome face, and framed by short, curly hair of a dark blonde. He could have been an angel…except his golden eyes were glowing with a simmering anger with shocking intensity. She shuddered and took a step back. This man, this beast before her was not a friend, nor even a familiar face. His whole stance screamed out predator._

_"Oh, now...aren't you going to invite me in? You're not being a very gracious host."_

_She shook her head as she continued to back away. His voice sounded familiar, a soft old world accent with false sincerity dripping from every syllable. She opened her mouth to scream, but then he was there, his hand pressed against her mouth, his other grabbing the back of her neck._

_"My mistake," he said, his voice colored with the smirk on his lips, "I've already been invited..." he trailed off as he looked down into her eyes. "My, my. You really do look just like her, don't you? Interesting. _She_ might have lost her usefulness to me when she turned, but you're still full of doppelganger blood." He looked her up and down lewdly and she shivered under his gaze._

_"Before we leave, though, I think I'd like a taste..."_

_She felt the prick of fangs against her flesh and her muffled scream rent the very air in two._

"Sylvia!"

She jerked awake, her hands flying out to push away the man with the haunting eyes, meeting nothing but air. What...? She looked around wildly, her heart thundering in her chest. Where was she?

"Sylvia! It's alright."

Her head flew to the left. Damon. She was in Damon's car. That's right. Slowly, her head cleared of the post-scare fuzz and the memories of last night came flooding back. She laid her head back against the seat and took a deep breath, stretching her legs out in the floor. A final shiver went through her as the last of the fear faded quickly in the light of the early morning.

She looked out the window, the familiar landscape flying past. They were nearly there - the hometown she swore she would leave behind forever. The sun had not quite peeked over the horizon yet; dark blues painting most of the sky with just a hint of orange to the east. Evidence of the storm lay in a few uprooted trees, bits of branches fallen to the side of the road, and everything looked decidedly wet.

"That must have been one hell of a nightmare." She nodded, her heart beat slowly returning to its normal pace. She ran a slightly shaky hand through her hair, teasing the soft waves back over her shoulders. She was sure she looked like ten shades of hell. She felt Damon's stare and turned to look at him. He was regarding her curiously. "Do you want to talk about it?"

On instinct, she started to shake her head no, but she paused. There was no harm in it, she supposed. It was just a dream. The details started to slip away faster as she grasped for them in her mind. "It's fading away..." she said, pressing the palm of one hand against the slightly clammy skin on her forehead. "I remember my dad crying. I think," she swallowed and slowly lowered her hand back to her lap, twining her fingers together, her eyelids slowly sliding over her honey-brown orbs. "I think it was when we first thought my aunt was dead." Her voice was barely above a whisper, but Damon - with his vampiric hearing - had no trouble making out her words.

He nodded once, his eyes trained back on the road. "I'm sorry, Sylvia. I know that Stefan and I brought all that back. I just-"

"Don't, Damon," she bit out. "I don't want your apologies, your excuses, or your pity. I just want to get this over with so I can go back to Richmond and forget it all." She folded her arms over her chest and kept her face towards her window, the pain on her features hidden from Damon's view.

He let out an exasperated sigh. "Look, Syl, I know you're still mad at me, but can't you even _try_ to understand why I did what I did?"

"No, Damon, I can't. And _don't_ call me Syl." His pet name for her sent chills down her spine, despite how hard she tried to fight her biological reactions to that man. Vampire. She took a deep breath, steeling herself. Coming on this trip was a mistake. She should have just stayed home. Maybe she could have scrounged up enough vervain to protect her from compulsion so they couldn't have forced her to leave. They still could have muscled her out, though. Ugh. Vampires were such a pain in the neck.

She snorted at her unintended joke.

"What's so funny?" he asked, a smile tugging up half of his mouth in a sexy smirk.

"Nothing. Just thinking about how much of a pain in the _neck_ you are."

He chuckled lowly as he clicked on the blinker, merging into the next lane. "I've been called worse."

She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to retort when she realized something. She had slept nearly the whole ride! She was supposed to be asking him questions. Her gaze leveled on the side of his face. "Did you put me to sleep?"

He scoffed. "What? Of course not." He didn't sound sincere in the slightest.

"You ass!" She smacked him in the arm. "Promise to answer my questions and then don't give me an opportunity to ask any! Ugh!" She smacked him again.

"Hey! HEY!" he held up his arm in defense, blocking her further attempts to hit him. "You were more than a little crabby, you know. I just didn't want to put up with it."

"Oh, that's nice. So it's YOUR fault I dreamt about that strange man with the golden eyes. Thanks a lot."

Damon froze for a split second before swerving all the way to the side of the road, slamming on the breaks, and turning to grab her by the shoulders. "What did you just say?"

Her eyes opened wide at his sudden change in mood. "Uh, in my dream? There was a guy who came into my house." She scrunched her nose up and shoved Damon's hands off of her arms as her mind struggled to recover the details. "He had already been in the house, he said, and he called me something - I can't remember what it was. He leaned over me and said I looked just like 'her' and then bit me. His eyes were this weird, glowing golden color. I've never seen anything like it." She looked at Damon, carefully reading his face. "Why? You mean it wasn't something you put into my head?"

He groaned and bashed his head back against the seat's headrest several times, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. "You're already having the dreams. This is not good."

"What's not good, Damon? What are you talking about?"

He shook his head and pulled back onto the road, swerving into traffic. Sylvia's heart rocketed up into her throat as her stomach lurched against the sudden motion of the car. "Damon! What the hell?!"

He didn't answer her. Instead, he grabbed his cell phone out of the middle console and punched in a number on speed dial. "She dreamed about him, Stefan."

Pause.

"No, she doesn't know."

Pause.

"Obviously he has something to do with the hybrids. They're _his_."

Pause. She was going to freak out if someone didn't tell her something soon.

"No, I don't know if it's connected. Do you think I'd be calling you if I had answers already?"

Sylvia fought to hide a smirk despite the situation. Damon was so...Damon.

"Yeah, the boarding house. See you there." He pressed the disconnect button and practically threw his phone back into the cup holder. Sylvia watched him in silence, her hands still carefully folded in her lap. She could hear his teeth grinding together. The sharp sound made her wince. He was obviously angry. She pressed her lips together to keep from talking. When he slammed his fist onto the steering wheel, she jumped in her seat and shouted in surprise.

"What is your problem?" He was so much moodier than he used to be. It was gradually growing more annoying the more time she spent with him. Was this epic change her aunt's fault?

He turned his head sharply, boring his eyes into hers. Ice blue fire. She swallowed convulsively.

"Do you really want to know?" His tone was low. Deadly. Suddenly, she wasn't so sure, but she nodded. Damon's jaw clenched briefly. "Well, I guess I did promise you answers." He exhaled, his head turned forward once again. Sylvia noticed out of the corner of her eye that they were flying down the road, weaving in and out of traffic like the other cars weren't moving at all. She subtly inched her hand over to grip the door handle. Damon's reflexes may be incredibly fast, but she had never gotten the hang of his driving.

"Judging by the description you gave me of his eyes, the guy in your dream was Klaus - Niklaus Mikaelson." Sylvia furrowed her brow. She'd never heard of him.

"So, wait, he's a real person? How can I dream of someone I've never met - or even heard about?"

"I wouldn't really call him a _person_." Damon chuckled darkly. "He's one of the Originals."

"Originals?"

"The Original Vampires."

Sylvia's mouth dropped open with a slight popping sound as her lips parted. She had always wondered where vampires came from; she had just figured it was some kind of vampire secret since Damon never talked about it.

"One of - so there's more than just him?"

"A whole family." Damon sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "That's a bit of a long story, to be honest, and one I'd rather not get into right now. Let's just say that a witch who wanted to protect her kids created them a long ass time ago. Mother of the year, am I right?"

Sylvia shook her head, ignoring his poor humor. "This woman turned her children into vampires to save them. Check. That still doesn't explain how I could dream of someone without knowing them. That's just...freaky."

Damon laughed. "You don't even know the beginning of freaky. And anyway, there's a reason your subconscious knows of him." Sylvia raised an eyebrow expectantly. This ought to be good. "You're what we like to call a 'doppelganger.'"

"A what?" Sylvia blinked at the unfamiliar term. "Wait! That's what that Klaus guy called me!"

Damon nodded, unsurprised. "Yeah, he knows all about doppelgangers. They're sort of a specialty of his."

"What is a doppelganger? I've never even heard of that. Does that mean I'm some kind of supernatural creature or something?"

"Basically, you're a carbon copy of someone else. In this case, your aunt Elena. Usually, in your family line, every century or so there's a new doppelganger. The Petrova doppelganger." He paused and smirked slightly. "You, however, are here early."

"Early? Why? Because Elena is still alive?"

"Not necessarily. The previous doppelganger doesn't have to be dead. That's been proven recently." His voice dripped with some emotion between sarcasm and regret. This all was weird. Her aunt was a vampire who killed vampires. There were hybrids that apparently were causing a lot of trouble. Sylvia was descendant from a long line of doppelgangers.

"What does that mean for me?"

"That's another long answer." Damon relaxed against his seat, his demeanor slipping back into the sarcastic, unfeeling vampire that Sylvia hated. "And it looks like it will just have to wait."

She straightened up in her seat and looked out the window. They were here. They were back in Mystic Falls. She clenched her hands in fists and locked her jaw, mentally fighting down a wave of nausea. This damn town… She had sworn to herself she would never come back here. There was nothing here but secrets and death. Damon drove through the main part of town, and Sylvia looked around, searching for any sign that things had changed, but there was nothing different. Mystic Falls was still a sleepy old town full of the same families that had always lived here, the only source of entertainment on weekends being the Grill. She shook her head. It had been years since she'd been back, but she guaranteed the inside of that place would be exactly as it had been all those years ago. Things in historic towns like these never changed.

Her Salvatore escort kept driving until he reached the turn off to the old Salvatore boarding house. Sylvia took a deep breath as they pulled into the gravel driveway. She had never been here. Her and Damon hadn't met until she had moved away to Richmond and started recording her songs. She sat there in her seat for a minute after Damon turned the car off. He looked at her for a second and she turned to look at him. His eyes flicked between hers, the blue color brightening. She was still wary of looking him in the eye. Her system was still vervain-free, something she needed to remedy as soon as possible come to think of it. He reached a hand out and gently tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, his other reaching out and resting gently on her thigh. A strange mix of warmth and chill radiated out from the point of contact.

"Damon, what are you-"

He cut off her question by pressing his lips against hers. She stiffened in surprise. He shifted closer, moving his hand to the back of her neck and pressing her mouth harder against his, his lips moving insistently until she had no choice but to fall into the kiss. She parted her lips in a breathy sigh and his fingers tightened on her leg.

And then he pulled away. She opened her eyes and found his face a scant few inches from hers – the whites of his eyes turned red, veins fanning out like rays from the sun. Her breath caught in her throat and she slowly reached a hand up to touch the uppermost part of his cheeks, running her fingers lightly along the raised skin there – a sign of his supernatural need. He inhaled slowly and turned his head towards her wrist, his lips skimming across the artery at the pressure point there. He wrapped a hand around her arm, holding her still as his fangs descended.

He looked at her then, their gazes locked. His mouth opened wider. She held her breath, her pulse racing. Then he bit down, his fangs piercing her skin into her vein, his mouth latching over the wound, not spilling a single drop of her blood. Her breath exhaled in a rush at the brief pain before the endorphins began to flow through her body carrying arousal with them. His eyes never left hers as he sucked on her wrist and she was certain he could see straight into her, claiming her all over again. She was helpless against the onslaught of desire and submission. She wanted to be his – there was no denying.

It was intimate. It was sexual.

Then it was over.

Damon pulled his mouth off of her with a strangled gasp. His tongue rolled seductively over his lips as he took in the last lingering drops of her blood. Her mouth fell open with a rush of breath when he finally released her arm.

"Ah," he sighed as he finally closed his eyes, releasing her from his penetrating stare. "I needed that."

She swallowed as she brought her arm down to her lap, her heart still pounding a bit too quickly in her chest, feelings stirring from that rapid beat that she didn't want to feel. She couldn't afford to feel for him. Not again. Not when so much had changed.

"Well," he clapped his hands and rubbed them together briefly. "I guess we might as well go on in then. Stefan's waiting." He opened his door and stuck one leg out before Sylvia reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his black, form-fitting, t-shirt – the kind of shirt he always seemed to be wearing.

"Wait, what the hell was that?" she asked. "You can't just feed from me, be that…that intimate with me, and then just go on about your day like nothing happened – like I'm just some convenient food for you here."

He cocked his head to the side, looking at her curiously. "What do you mean I can't? I think I just did."

Her mouth fell open, sputtering for words. "But-but-"

"But what?" His voice was mocking, cutting her to the bone. He leaned back into the car, grabbing her chin and forcing her to meet his eyes. "You are mine, Sylvia. I know it and you know it. Even though I left, you weren't with anyone else. You still want me; I can see it every time you look at me." She swallowed back tears at his careless words, each bit of truth hitting her harder than the last. "I'm a vampire, Sylvia, in case you forgot. I need blood." His lips turned up into a smile of false affection. "Yours just happens to be more delicious than most." He cupped her cheek, searching her eyes.

"Now, be a good girl and come inside with me."

Sylvia tore her face out of his grip. Her anger, her pain, were too much to put into words. She nearly pulled the handle off the door in her haste to get out of the car, slamming it shut roughly behind her. Damon was in front of her before she had taken two steps. He stood there looking as cocky as ever, his arms folded across his chest and a look of utter amusement on his face.

"Did I say something wrong?"

Unbelievable.

"Just get out of my fucking way, Damon."

He raised an eyebrow. "Now, that wasn't very nice."

She reared her arm back and slapped him as hard as she possibly could across the face. His head jerked to the side and he opened his mouth, tonguing his cheek. His hand shot out and grabbed her arm, drawing her to his chest, trapped motionless against him. His other hand grabbed a fistful of her hair, jerking her head to one side, exposing the pale skin at her throat.

She closed her eyes tight against the pain. His breath was warm on her neck. "I could drain you right here, right now, and then we wouldn't have to worry about your _feelings_ or what Klaus may or may not want you for. Killing you would solve a lot of our problems." His voice was dangerously low in her ear. She swallowed past the fear.

"You won't kill me, Damon."

His dark chuckle raised tiny hairs all over her body. "Yeah? How do you know that?"

"Because somewhere in there, somewhere in all of your darkness, you still care about me."

He was silent, motionless. She held her breath, the seconds ticking by like hours. She could feel her blood rushing through her veins. Finally, he released her. She stumbled a step backwards regaining her balance. When she looked up he was gone. She took a deep breath and leaned back against the hood of the car, her legs shaking too much for her to stand unsupported. She had sounded sure, but she hadn't honestly known if he would kill her right there or not. But he hadn't. What did that mean?

_BRRRRRRRIIIING._

She jumped. Her phone? She patted her pockets until she found it buried in her hoodie. It was her dad. She swore as she looked towards the Salvatore's door. How far away did she have to be for them to not hear her? Quickly, she swiped her hand over her eyes before she slid the answer button over and put the phone to her ear, walking away towards the tree line.

"Hello?"

"_Sylvia,"_ he sounded relieved. _"How are you? Are you alright?"_

"Yeah, dad, I'm fine. What's going on?"

"_I don't know. I just got this…feeling."_

She forced a laugh and hoped it sounded authentic. "I'm alright. I'm, uh, I'm actually back in Mystic Falls right now."

"_What? Why? I though you weren't ever going back."_

She sighed quietly. "I wasn't going to."

"_Then what changed your mind? Did something happen?"_

She crossed her fingers behind her back, a habit since childhood. "No. Nothing happened. I just started feeling a little homesick, you know? Thought I'd – thought I'd come back by and say hi to all my old friends here."

It was quiet on the other end for a moment. _"Just be careful, Sylvia. You know I don't like that place."_

"I know, dad. I won't be here long." She fervently hoped she wouldn't be, at least.

"_Okay. Do me a favor?"_

"Sure."

"_If you're planning on staying overnight, which I'm assuming you are, will you stay at the Forbes' place?"_

That was an odd request. "Why?"

"_Just do it, okay? For me?"_

She had been planning on staying with Damon, but that might not be the best idea any longer. "Okay, dad. Do you think they'll still remember me?" She laughed softly, surprised to find it wasn't completely false.

Her dad chuckled, too. _"Of course they'll remember you, honey. Caroline and I go way back."_

"Alright, dad. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay? I'll call you when I'm leaving."

"_Alright, sugar. You just be careful."_

"I always am, dad."

"_I love you, Sylvia."_

"Love you, too."

She pressed the disconnect button and sighed, tears welling up in her throat. She wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him so badly she almost couldn't stand it…but what would happen? He had been compelled to forget about the supernatural creatures that flocked to Mystic Falls. If she was right, Sylvia reckoned a whole lot of his life had involved vampires. If Elena's past had involved both Salvatore brothers, it was natural that Jeremy's had, too. How many memories had been erased in order to make him forget them entirely? How much damage had that done to his brain? How much of his erratic behavior was at the hands of vampires?

She was done. She was absolutely done with vampires. They had brought nothing but shit to her entire family. She shoved her phone in her pocket and turned back towards the house.

Stefan was standing beside Damon's car, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. Sylvia started. How long had been standing there? She pushed her hair behind her ear and tried to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace. She made to walk past him into the house, but he reached out and put his hand on her arm, stopping her. She flinched away from his touch.

"Is everything alright with Jeremy?"

Though his tone was nice enough, Sylvia's defenses were still raised, and she did not take kindly to him eavesdropping on her conversation.

"Yes, thank you." She turned again to walk off and he stopped her once more.

"Listen, Sylvia, I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night."

"Save it, Stefan. Nothing happened and I am done hearing apologies, especially the kind that aren't sincere."

He frowned, remorse in his eyes. "But I _am_ sincere-"

"Please. I just want to go inside, do whatever I need to do, and then go home."

He opened his mouth like he was going to say something else, but then closed it and nodded, removing his hand from her arm.

"Thank you." She walked briskly to the door and stepped inside.

_Whoa._

Sylvia hadn't really considered what the inside of the Salvatore house would look like, but this far outreached any imagining she could have done. The wood work was amazing; the rugs were exquisite and obviously expensive; the art hanging on the walls was classy but not overly so; all the furniture had a quiet air of wealth but still looked comfortable. It was an overwhelming place and it was beautiful.

She stepped down from the entry way and looked into the extensive sitting room; the fire blazing merrily in the hearth added a touch of warmth to the big house. Damon was seated there, on a couch, a glass of a dark red liquid in his hand. Sylvia immediately averted her eyes. Apparently her blood wasn't enough. She convinced herself she didn't care. It was better that Damon drink someone else's blood than feed from her. She was not his blood bag. She held her head high as she walked in and took a seat on a couch arranged catty-cornered to the one Damon occupied. She pulled her cigarettes out of her hoodie pocket and held the pack up in question.

Damon nodded. "Only if you give me one." Sylvia narrowed her eyes at him as he took an unnecessarily long drink from the glass, but she tossed one to him anyway. She wanted one bad enough to share, she supposed. She held one between her lips as she lit it.

When she heard the door close, she called out, "You want a smoke, Stefan?"

"I'm not Stefan, but I'd love one."

Sylvia's mouth fell open, dropping the cigarette onto the floor. Damon rushed off the couch to put out the lit tobacco before it could burn a hole through the rug, but Sylvia didn't even notice. Her heart thundered in her chest and her brain refused to acknowledge what she had just heard. She wasn't prepared for this. Damon hadn't told her…

"Hello, Sylvia."

She turned slowly, her eyes widening. Her mouth worked up and down as she fought for words, her voice refusing to work. Damon stood next to her, almost protectively. He took a puff of the cigarette before flicking the ashes into a decorative brass tray on the coffee table beside them.

"Well, Elena, isn't this a surprise?" His voice did not sound too kind. "I thought we were going to meet you tonight at that bar in Norfolk?"

"There's no time."

Sylvia looked into her aunt's eyes, eyes she hadn't seen for eleven years. She looked…cold, like she had hardened herself against the world.

"Did something happen?" Stefan asked as he entered the room. Elena's gaze didn't waver from Sylvia's.

"Klaus is almost here. He has at least eight hybrids with him." She cocked her head to the side, her voice taking on a dark and thoughtful tone. "And he wants _you_."

Sylvia swallowed hard. Damon's hand went to her shoulder, his grip tightening painfully. She looked up into his face as he looked down at her. Something flashed in his eyes, some deeper emotion that was gone before she could place it. He looked back at Elena.

"Did you figure out what he wants?"

She nodded. An emotionless, detached nod.

"Well?"

Sylvia stood up from the couch and turned her body towards her aunt. She could have been looking into a mirror.

"She's not a direct descendant of mine, Damon."

"But she's a doppelganger."

"Obviously."

"What does that mean? How is that possible?"

"That's what Klaus wants to know. He thinks her blood is capable of making an entirely new species. Something that goes beyond vampires and werewolves, or even hybrids."

"Why does he think that?" Stefan leaned against the back of the couch.

"There's never been a doppelganger besides direct descendants of the previous doppelgangers. Technically, she's not a Petrova doppelganger."

"And Klaus wants to use her blood to make a new species for himself, I take it?" Damon had a way of dropping verbal bombs like he didn't have a care in the world.

"I think so, yes."

All at once, all three of them turned and looked at her. Sylvia shifted uncomfortably under their gazes. She didn't want to have special blood. She didn't want to be a doppelganger. She cleared her throat. "What are we going to do?"

"It'd be easiest to just kill you," Elena said simply. Damon took a step closer to Sylvia, her skin hyper aware of his presence. He smiled a tight smile.

"That's not really an option."

Elena sighed. "I thought not."

A loud knock at the door interrupted their musings. Everyone looked at everyone else. It would have been comical in any other situation, but they were all too tense, too worried. The door creaked open and all the vampires in the room moved at once to the entryway.

"Hey! Jeez! What the hell, guys?!"

"Tyler?!"

"Hey, Elena. Long time no see. I heard you guys have hybrid problems. Thought I'd come and lend a hand."

Sylvia rubbed her hands up and down her arms as they all let the dark-haired boy go.

"So, where is she, Elena? Where's Sylvia? I haven't seen her since she was born!"

Elena pointed silently and the boy turned around. Sylvia didn't recognize him at all, but he jerked to a halt, his head flicking rapidly back and forth between Sylvia and Elena.

"But…what's going on? Why does she look like you?"

Elena opened her mouth to answer, but another voice answered for her, someone walking through the front door.

"Because she's a doppelganger, Tyler."

Everyone froze and Sylvia felt like she was going to faint. She recognized that voice. That was the voice from her dream. That was…

"Klaus." Damon pushed Sylvia behind his body. She peered around him, wanting to see if her dream was really so accurate, fearing that it would be.

"Isn't this nice? It's like a gathering of friends, a little reunion party. The Salvatore brothers, Elena, Tyler - my old hybrid friend…and you."

Sylvia swallowed and took an involuntary step back as Klaus' eyes locked on hers. As she watched, his veins began to fill with blood just like a vampire's, but his eyes did not turn red. No. They were much more terrifying. His mouth opened wider, Sylvia saw the tips of fangs behind his lips, and his eyes began to glow that golden hue just like in her dream.

He took one step forward, his body leaning forward, his arms raised slightly at his sides, his entire body ready for a fight. He lifted one hand and beckoned with one finger.

"You're going to come with me."


	6. Klaus

The urge to run was nearly overwhelming. Klaus stood there beneath the archway of the Salvatore's sitting room, his stance completely confident. Looking around her, Sylvia didn't know how he thought he could possibly win. Surely, he wasn't so strong that he could take on three vampires (assuming Elena would fight, that is) and a hybrid by himself…

Sylvia's heart leapt into her throat when Damon pushed her further behind him, his form shifting into one that spoke loudly of protection.

"Come now, Damon. Do you really think you can keep her from me? You are vastly outnumbered."

What was he talking about? Then she heard it: a low, rumbling sound that grew in volume and intensity. Young men poured into the house through the open front door. All with teeth bared, upper fangs pointed downward, a set of smaller fangs on the bottom row of their teeth, and eyes glowing with the same bright gold of Klaus'.

_Hybrids._

This was not good. She reached a hand out and placed it gently on Damon's back. Her eyes flicked briefly over his shoulder to where her aunt stood, one hip jutted out to the side, looking extremely bored with the entire situation. A nauseating wave roiled through her stomach. Would Elena really have killed her just to be done with the situation? Vampirism had transformed her aunt into a completely different person. It was painfully obvious, though she had only been in her company for a few minutes, that the Elena she grew up with – that loving and caring woman – was gone.

Fearfully, she fisted her hand in the material of Damon's shirt. Whether he admitted it aloud or not, it was obvious he cared. If he truly thought she was just for his entertainment, his pleasure, or whatever else, he wouldn't be standing here and defending her. There was a small amount of solace in that. If Klaus was going to kill her, at least she'd know Damon cared.

With an annoyed sigh, Klaus said, "Why are you lot always so dramatic? If I wanted to kill her, she'd be dead. Do you think that would really serve my purpose? I need her blood. As long as she lives, she will continue to supply it. Let's all be logical, shall we?"

"So, what, you expect us to turn her over to you so she can be some kind of lab rat?" Damon snorted. "Not likely, Klaus."

She peeked out from behind his back, her eyes unerringly finding Klaus'. "The way I see it, you don't have a choice, mate." He held his arms up to the sides, gesturing to the hybrids that surrounded them all.

Stefan moved into a defensive crouch – his eyes constantly shifting from one hybrid to another, Damon's muscles tightened further, even Tyler – the hybrid Sylvia didn't even know – allowed his supernatural element to begin to take over, his eyes matching those of the other hybrids in the room – his two sets of fangs descending and a low growl sounding in his throat. Elena was the only one to not react in the slightest. Sylvia felt her heart constrict in her chest. There was no way they'd get out of here alive if they fought. Damon, Stefan, and Tyler could probably take out several of the hybrids, but their bite was poison and there were simply too many of them. If they resisted, they would all die. She couldn't allow that.

"He's right." Her voice came out steady despite her quivering limbs. "If you fight, Damon, you'll only end up dead." Slowly, tentatively, she took a step out from behind him. His hand shot out and grabbed her waist, holding her back.

"What are you _doing?!"_ he hissed at her.

She reached down and wrapped her hands around his forearm. "I'm serious, Damon. All it takes is one bite, you told me. I'm not willing to take that risk. Besides, he said he wouldn't kill me, right?" She looked back at Klaus, her fear threatening to bubble over, her every instinct screaming at her to run away. A deliciously evil smile spread across Klaus' face and she felt she might faint at the dark promise in his eyes.

"Apparently the girl has more brains than the rest of you combined." He looked slightly bemused at Elena. "Except perhaps you, Elena." His eyes hardened and his entire face turned cold, all traces of amusement gone. "I thought your death was the end of it. No offspring meant no more doppelgangers. The few hybrids I've got were all there would be. But now…" His face brightened again and he looked back at Sylvia. "Now, I've got a chance for something new, something even better." He beckoned to her once again and she squeezed Damon's arm before letting him go and stepping away from his restraining embrace.

His voice bit out through his teeth. "And what do you think her blood is going to do?"

"That's the question, isn't it? There's never been a doppelganger outside of the Petrova line." He reached his hand out to her and she placed her own inside it. He jerked her to him before she could react and her breath caught in her throat in fear. This was too like her dream.

His hand stroked down her hair in a mock lover's embrace. "We've got to find ourselves some werewolves now, don't we, love?" Sylvia swallowed and trembled in his grasp.

_He's not going to kill me. He's not going to kill me. He's not going to kill me._

"I guess we'll be going now." He sounded so cheery, like he was conversing with friends. "Don't try to follow us. It'll be best for her if you don't." He jerked his head to the door and all of his hybrids blurred out in one motion. "Have a nice day."

She had just a second to look at Damon once more, his blue eyes burning with rage in his handsome face, before Klaus tightened his grip on her and sped away. The entire world seemed to be flying past as his supernatural speed took them far away from the Salvatore's home. A wave of vertigo washed over her, and she closed her eyes shut tight. She'd probably puke if there were anything in her stomach. She hadn't had anything since that ice cream last night. …was that really just last night?

When they came to an abrupt stop, she gasped aloud, her hands instinctively clutching onto Klaus' shoulders. "Alright, in you get." She heard a car door open and she was pushed onto the seat. She slowly opened her eyes and found that she was in the back of an extremely nice car. Hopelessly ignorant of makes and models, she hazarded a guess that it was some Jaguar, but couldn't know for sure. The windows were all tinted, the colors of the world beyond distorted into darker hues. The door opposite her opened and closed quickly. She had expected Klaus to drive, but two of his hybrids occupied the front. He was her companion in the back seat.

She slid away from him, grasping the door handle tightly in her fist, no thought of trying to escape - there was no way she could hope to effectively get away from him – she just liked having something to grasp onto. His eyes followed the movement and a smirk stretched his lips in a striking way. "Are you afraid of me?" Immediately deciding truth was probably best, she nodded. His eyes searched her face briefly before he settled back against the seat as the car started and they pulled onto the main road leading out of Mystic Falls. Sylvia never thought she'd be sorry to leave the place, but it was bound to be safer than whatever mystery future she had with this hybrid who wanted her blood.

"I keep my word."

Her hands shakily pulled the seatbelt across her chest and clicked it into the buckle before she looked up at Klaus. He was studying her intently, his expression not unpleasant.

"I won't kill you."

She only nodded. If she opened her mouth, she might start crying, and that was something she certainly didn't want to do in front of him.

"I'm not saying you shouldn't be afraid of me." The car's engine purred quietly as he reached a hand out and took hold of her arm, tightening his grip when she instinctively tried to pull away. The leather of the seat cushioned her body as she pressed further into it, her body attempting to flee even though she had no where to go and had effectively trapped herself by buckling the seatbelt. Damned habit. Klaus pulled on her arm strongly, his fingers lightly digging into her skin. It didn't hurt, but it was clear he could easily make it painful if he wanted to. Her strength was no near match for his.

He brought her wrist up beneath his nose, inhaling her fragrance. The image of Damon doing the same came to her mind, but this was different. There was neither sensuality nor sexuality to this act. Klaus was a predator and he was using all of his senses to know his prey.

"I've lived over a thousand years. I've seen a million things that you cannot even imagine. Yet it never ceases to amaze me how alike you doppelgangers are to one another. You smell just like Katerina…"

Alarms went off throughout her whole body. Her heart began to pound more quickly, pushing the blood through her veins more forcefully, as if it was attempting to make her life fluid more obvious to the predator at her hand. Despite how she tried, she couldn't tear her gaze away from Klaus, and when he looked up into her eyes, she knew she was done for. There was no vervain in her system and he was an original. What had she gotten herself into?

As his pupils expanded and contracted, a distant niggling thought warned her that he was using compulsion, but it was gone before she could truly give it any attention. Her mind was full of Klaus. It was calm and quiet, a peaceful change from the churning thoughts that had been relentlessly tiring her psyche. One by one, her muscles relaxed into the soft, cushioned seat.

"This will only hurt a little. You will not move or make a sound. Just a taste…"

Vaguely, she felt a sharp pain in her wrist, and then it was gone. Her eyes remained trained on Klaus as his lips pressed against the same spot Damon's had been not long ago. The golden glow of his eyes disappeared behind his eyelids as he moaned against her skin in predatory bliss. She found herself sighing along with him. It was nice to give him something he wanted. She was glad he enjoyed her. When the contact broke, he retained his grip on her arm. His head dropped back and he made a soft, masculine sound of satisfaction. She watched through a slight haze as his tongue darted out and gathered up the remaining blood on his lips.

"Just as I thought: delicious." He released her arm, but she felt no need to move it out of his lap when it fell. What was the point? If Klaus needed to feed, she would let him. She was his now, after all. He opened his eyes and looked down at her hand. A low laugh emitted from his throat and he shook his head back and forth slowly, a smirk on his face. His eyes found hers again. He didn't speak a word, but she felt the compulsion fall away from her like someone had removed an umbrella from over her head while it continued to rain. A coldness filled her body and she jerked her arm back from his vicinity. Damn vampires. Or hybrids. Or whatever. Damn all supernatural things.

At her expression, he threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, now don't get all offended, sweets. I've got an insatiable curiosity for new things." His eyes flashed with genuine amusement that sent chills down Sylvia's spine. Turning from her, his fingers pressed a small button to his left that Sylvia would never have noticed, it blended so well into the paneling. Her body jerked in surprise when the smaller middle cushion that rested between her and Klaus folded down from the back of the seat and a piece of ebony wood slid back towards the trunk of the car, revealing a dimly lit box that held a decanter of what Sylvia was certain was blood. Her left hand began to pick out guitar chords in the air, her nervous habit returning, as Klaus pulled the container out, poured a generous amount into a glass, and returned it to its hiding place, the box then sliding back out of sight.

It was surprisingly elegant, the way Klaus tilted the glass up to his lips and drank from its dark contents. He smacked his lips together in a soft sound of approval. With a nod of his head, he indicated her hands, "What are you doing?"

She froze and looked down at her fingers. She hadn't realized she was doing anything. "Oh, I, um," she cleared her throat and tried again. "I pick out guitar chords subconsciously when I get nervous or anxious."

"Interesting." He cocked his head to the side, regarding her with more curiosity than before. "You play then, I take it?"

Sylvia brought her hands back into her lap and nodded. "Yeah. I've recorded a couple of albums." At that, his eyebrows raised up slightly.

"Really? Fascinating. What kind of music? Anything I would have heard of?"

"I doubt it." She looked down at her hands as she laced her fingers together. "I'm definitely not famous or anything. I just have a short-term contract with a tiny record label in Richmond. I don't really have a particular style. I guess if I had to describe my music it'd be some kind of Indie-rock, but that's not entirely accurate."

He took another sip from his glass.

"Can you liken it to anything I may have heard? I've got quite an eclectic taste in music. It tends to happen when you live for as long as I have."

"A lot of my friends say the music is like A Perfect Circle, but I sing like Amy Lee." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Do you know them?"

He nodded. "Yes. I'm a long time fan of Maynard."

Her face turned to his in shock. "Really?"

"Does that surprise you?" He rested the ankle of one leg across the knee of the other in the spacious backseat.

"A bit."

"Why?"

"I just pegged you for a classical lover."

He laughed again and Sylvia caught herself smiling along with him. Immediately, she schooled her features and looked back down into her lap. Klaus wanted to use her blood to create a new species of supernatural beings for his own selfish reasons. She did not need to talk so easily to him or find him charming. He had basically kidnapped her, for Christ's sake!

But she couldn't help it. Aside from briefly feeding from her, he had done nothing threatening and hadn't hurt her in any way. He could have thrown her into his trunk or compelled her to do a million things. He could have had his hybrids beat her. Yes, she had gone with him willingly, but would that stop a truly evil person from doing horrible things? She doubted it. Her eyes slid up and back to his face. What was it about him that was so charming? Was it his accent? His easy-going, almost friendly, attitude? She mentally shook herself. It didn't matter. She would keep her guard up until she figured this whole thing out. It had never been her way to panic in unfamiliar situations. Being with Damon for so many years had helped her toughen up. The knowledge of creatures in the world that should only belong in legends had given her a full personality change. It was strange, because she always felt that knowing about vampires should make her more paranoid, quicker to fear and mistrust, but it had done the opposite. Somehow, her relationship with Damon had shown her that the world was full of surprises and she should just take them as they come.

If she had fled from Damon when she learned what he was, if she had given in to the fear that came naturally from such revelations, she would have never experienced the kind of relationship they'd had. It had been intense. The good and the bad were both magnified. It may be a dark side of the world and its inhabitants, but the dark was not necessarily bad. Without darker colors, a painting would have no contrast.

So it was that even though she had been taken away from her not-quite-boyfriend, even though the existence of strange half-vampire/half-werewolf creatures had been revealed, even though she was currently in a car with two such hybrids and their creator who also just happened to be one of the first vampires to ever exist, and even though she was going god knew where so this hybrid could use her blood to create some new species, allegedly, she was not panicking. Was she afraid? Certainly. It would be insanity to not be afraid. Self-preservation was upmost in humanity. She was afraid, but she was not losing her head or thinking irrationally. So far, she had no reason to believe that Klaus would kill her. What he said earlier to Damon and all the rest of them made sense: if she died, he would lose his blood supply to make new creatures – if it was even possible in the first place.

That brought other thoughts to mind. He had said both in her dream and in waking life, that Elena had run out her usefulness, that she had ruined his plans. That meant that he must have been using her blood to create the hybrids in the first place. That was interesting. Had her aunt turned to stop him from using her blood? She filed that thought away in her mind. Hopefully, if he truly didn't kill her, she could find out a lot of things. She took a deep breath and straightened her spine, lifting her head and looking Klaus levelly in the eyes. He had lived over a thousand years. What sights he must have seen, what events he must have witnessed. Sylvia had never been interested in history, not in the slightest, but Klaus had lived through the entire history of the world that humans knew about. Eternity seemed like such a long time.

She had once asked Damon if he was going to turn her. He had told her that it was her choice, and if she truly wanted to be cursed with such an existence – to forever crave blood above all else – that he would not deny her. The decision had never been reached. It seemed fruitless to have a relationship of any kind with a vampire if she was never going to turn. Where could they feasibly end up? Damon would stay forever twenty-four and Sylvia would grow older and eventually die. They had no future together as they were. What was she to Damon, if not a momentary distraction in eternity? But if she turned, she would kill people. She would always want blood. Unless they found a witch willing to help her out, she would be confined to the darkness, a true creature of the night. It was a decision she was not comfortable making – at least not yet.

Then, he had left. Though now she knew what he had been doing, or at least the reasoning behind it, it still cut her deeply. If he could go without a word, who's to say he would stick around for eternity? That was an awfully long time. Would he tire of her? Would she want to be alive forever if her reason for turning abandoned her? It was too difficult to make that kind of, literally, life-altering decision. She was already older than Damon, physically, but she didn't know what to do. Now, it seemed, she had a purpose as a mortal. Klaus might kill her if she decided now to turn. He might put a stake through her heart and cut her eternal life short.

She realized he was staring at her. Had he said something and she had missed it in the midst of her internal ramblings? She cleared her throat and turned her head to gaze out the darkened windows.

"So…where are we going?"

The soft 'tink' of glass on glass accompanied her question. He must be getting more blood.

"Well, a couple of my hybrids have informed me that a small pack of werewolves are running through the mountains in Eastern Tennessee. We're going to go and find them."

A few strands of hair fell in her face as she turned and regarded him cautiously. "And you're going to feed them my blood?"

"That is the idea, yes. It's interesting, really. To make the first batch of hybrids I have now, I had to feed them my blood, kill them, and then give them Elena's blood once they 'woke up', as it were. A fascinating study, to be sure." Her empty stomach protested the visuals that accompanied his description. She was not squeamish necessarily, but all that killing and blood feeding definitely didn't set well. "I reckon that's what we'll try first, since it worked so well in the past."

Her body stilled when he reached a hand out towards her. "Easy, love," he said in a quiet voice, and he gently brushed the loose strand out of her eyes. A shiver rippled over her skin at the soft touch.

"What happens if my blood doesn't do anything different than my – Elena's?"

"Then I'll have more hybrids. It's a win/win situation, darling."

His voice was so soothing. It was…weird. She nodded at his answer. Abruptly realizing she had leaned closer towards his hand, she sat back.

"I say we've got about five hours of driving ahead of us," he said, his tone low and contemplative. "I suggest you rest. You look like you didn't sleep well last night."

She nodded again; she seemed to be doing that a lot lately. "That's a bit of an understatement. I don't sleep well in cars, or on an empty stomach." Her arms wrapped around her middle and Klaus' eyes followed the movement.

"We'll stop and get you something to eat on our way." He leaned forward and said something to the hybrid driving the car, but it was too low for her to hear. When he sat back down, he leaned towards her, his hand lightly gripping her chin, directing her gaze to him. "Why don't you go ahead and sleep while we find something for you?" His suggestion once again filled her mind and she immediately felt her eyelids getting heavy. "I'll wake you up once we get there." She was nodding off, her head resting softly against the corner of the seat and the car door before she could even say _okay_…

* * *

"DAMMIT!"

"Damon, calm down."

"No, Stefan, I will not _calm down_. In case you missed it, Klaus was here and when he left he took Sylvia with him."

_Dammit_. He should have stopped him. Surely, there was some way he could have stopped him. Klaus was immortal, but if he killed enough of his hybrids, ripped their filthy hearts out, it would have gotten to him. He would have stopped. _Or he could have just killed you_. He scowled inwardly at his voice of reason. That pesky conscious-thing never shut up.

"There was nothing you could have done. He would have killed us all."

He stopped his pacing and glared heavily at the vampire girl in his house. The bitch that had taken his heart, so freshly mended from the betrayal of Katherine, and shattered it on the floor.

"Elena, just don't talk. I hope you don't actually think I care if you die or not."

Her laugh was akin to having needles shoved into his ears over and over. "I think you care more than you want to admit. Since Katherine was killed, you've been pining over me, don't deny it."

With a wordless cry of rage, he sped to her, his hand wrapping satisfactorily around her throat. The sheer force of his anger probably could have lifted her from the ground. He slammed her into the wall once…twice…three times.

"Damon…"

Stefan's warning only served to enflame him further. This bitch had come between them, just as Katherine had. They had both fallen for her like the past 145 years had taught then nothing. He had never had her as a mortal, but thought once she had turned and couldn't survive on anything but human blood straight from the vein, that she was his at last. Stefan never could handle drinking just a little blood, and his abstaining lifestyle could not mesh with hers. But Damon and Elena's time together had been brief.

The more blood she had, the more detached from her humanity she became. Damon could regulate himself. He could drink from humans with control and still keep his emotions in check. He did not fade to a cold and unfeeling place that a lot of vampires went to and he did not kill mindlessly and horribly like Stefan did when he became 'the Ripper.' It was the best of both worlds. Elena, though, never was able to find that balance.

She did not kill unnecessarily. He successfully taught her how to feed, stop, erase, and repeat. Stefan believed that she was simply too soft for vampirism. In life, she cared deeply about others and did all she could to protect them. In death, that was magnified a hundred fold. Similar to Stefan, her conscious began to eat away at her. There were times when the she and Damon would go off, feed together, and have a fantastic time – everything that a vampiric afterlife should be like. Then, when they eventually returned to their lives in Mystic Falls or wherever they were 'stationed' at during that time, the guilt at drinking from people like they were fast food restaurants would begin to sour in Elena's mind. She wouldn't be able to handle it.

The more it happened, the more she began to detach herself from her feelings. Her switch was always a step away from 'off.' Then, one fateful night, she killed a boy. They had been at a nightclub in New York. Damon owned an apartment in Manhattan and they were hitting the 'scene' as it were, feeding off of drunken dancers and reveling in the night. There was a boy at this nightclub, nineteen and obviously plastered. Elena had glided across the dance floor to him, honing in on an easy target, her body swaying and spiraling to the hypnotic rhythm. Damon had watched her for a moment, entranced by how the flashing lights enhanced her beauty, before leaving her on her own to go find someone to slake his own thirst. A pretty little thing by the bar caught his attention and he fed, erased, and turned around to pull Elena into a sweaty dance. But she wasn't anywhere to be seen.

He followed her scent and the faint trace of blood to the back door by the restrooms. It opened into a dark, seedy alley and there she had been: covered in blood and weeping. It took only a second to see what had happened. She had lost control. The poor kid's jugular was ripped to shreds. There was no chance of saving him. When he had approached her to try to calm her down and talk her through it, Elena had fled. She was gone before he could even begin to catch her.

He had returned to the apartment and waited. She never showed up. Eventually, he returned to Mystic Falls where Stefan was still living at the boarding house and told him what had happened. A couple months later, there was Elena at their doorstep. She had turned off her humanity. Completely flipped the switch. That was when he had left Mystic Falls, traveled to Richmond, and met Sylvia.

He closed his eyes as the memory of their first encounter surfaced readily in his mind. His shock at seeing her – thinking it was Elena. How was he to know there was another doppelganger? He, like the rest of the vampires he knew, had figured there would be no more since Elena turned without having any children first. Sylvia was an anomaly among anomalies.

"Damon just let her go."

Stefan's voice brought him back to the present. Elena's hands were gripping his arm so tightly that if he wasn't two centuries older than her, she probably would have broken the bone in half. As it was, though, she was rather helpless at the moment, having been caught completely by surprise.

"Why should I, Stefan?"

"Because she's not the one you're really angry with right now."

He snarled under his breath. Curse his brother and his inconvenient logic. He should rip her head off right now. Kill her and be done with it.

"Please, Damon."

He bashed Elena's skull against the wall one more time for good measure before swiftly pulling his hand away from her so she collapsed in a heap on the floor. He had crushed her windpipe, for sure, a wound that he personally knew hurt like hell while it healed. He took a deep breath, wiped his hands on his trousers, and calmly walked across the room to the table that held a neat row of glass bottles of various shapes and sizes, holding various liquids. His favorite whiskey stood out like a beacon.

"I guess we have to start brainstorming," he said as he poured a generous amount into a glass.

"Brainstorming for what? You aren't thinking of going after her are you? You heard what Klaus said."

He spun around and pointed a finger at his brother. "You say that like you've never done it before. I remember several instances where I came along with you to save your sorry ass, even though I knew it was a suicide mission, all for _her_." He pointed an accusing finger at Elena, not tearing his eyes from Stefan.

Stefan's head drooped down towards his chest and he brought a hand up to massage his temples. "Yes, Damon, but this is different."

"Why, Stefan? Because you don't love the damsel in distress? I didn't realize that was a stipulation." He took a long drink from the glass.

Elena finally struggled up to a standing position, her hand touching her throat gingerly as she coughed.

"Of course that's how it is," she rasped. "Stefan learned his lesson a long time ago." A look passed between the two ex-lovers at her words and Damon couldn't stop the sigh of annoyance from coming out. Lately, there had been so much tension between the two of them when Elena came around. It was like her and Damon had never been together, even though, technically, they were the last ones to have an actual relationship. Stefan had left her early on in her vampire life and had lived liked a recluse for a decade, unable to watch or come to terms with the fact that his brother was with Elena.

"Yeah. Lesson. Right." Damon shook his head and drained the rest of the glass before pouring it full once again. "Well, while he was 'learning his lesson,' I was dealing with reality. Now the reality is that Sylvia is pretty much kidnapped by Klaus to use as his own personal blood bank to create his freaky neo-hybrids. That is not a safe occupation to have."

"She's safer with him than with us," Stefan pointed out. "He'll protect her since he needs her alive to have her blood, you heard him say it yourself. Klaus is immortal, Damon. He will be able to protect her better than you ever could."

Damon's nostrils flared. His brother might be true, but having his helplessness pointed out to him was not the best way to go about it.

"So, you want me to just sit here and wait until Klaus is done, which will probably be never? I don't think so."

"What are you going to do? He said it will be worse for her if you chase after them. Do you want to be the reason for her pain? Do you think she'll love you more for it?"

With a frustrated scream, Damon hurled his glass into the fireplace, the shattering sound pleasing in his ears. He didn't know what to do. He had treated Sylvia like ass last night and this morning. He had played it up like he hadn't missed her, when the truth was that he had left to help her; he hadn't said goodbye because it would have been too hard; he had itched to return to her every day he was gone, always afraid she had moved on; he had hardened his heart to his human emotions in those months spent with Elena tracking the hybrids' movements and trying to discern their purpose. It had been hell being away from her, but by the time he came back, he had resurrected all of his walls against the human world and the things it made him feel. Being around another vampire who had flipped the switch had made it even harder to feel anything and all the easier to slip back under the mantle of _vampire_, the darkest parts.

He knew he had changed in those short months. It was incredible that it was even possible for such a short amount of time to have so profound an effect on him. Perhaps it was because it had taken so long to feel again in the first place. It was so much easier to slip back into the old habit of not caring for anyone or anything but himself. So, when he had returned to her, and saw how messed up he had made her when he left, he kept the walls up to keep the guilt away.

He had fed from her without permission, something he vowed he would never do, something he had put her on vervain to avoid doing. Then, he had threatened her. He had put on the front that she meant nothing to him. She had left with Klaus thinking that he didn't love her…

There must be a way to get her back, to fix this. He turned and looked at Stefan and Elena, both of them looking warily at him, expecting him to fly off the handle no doubt. He felt like it. He felt like he could just slaughter the entire world if it would bring Sylvia back.

"There is one way to reason with Klaus," he said, a thought forming in his mind.

"All the White Oak is gone, Damon. And for good this time. The Originals made sure of that."

He rolled his eyes at Elena. "I'm not talking about some tree. I don't want to try to kill Klaus. That always worked _so well_ in the past." He looked at Stefan. "There's one person that always gets through to him and makes him see reason. Someone he truly loves, yet fears above all others."

"Damon, you're not thinking…"

"Oh, yes, Stefan. _His mother._"

Stefan put his head in his hands. "She's dead, Damon." He looked up and Damon saw the frustration and concern in his brother's eyes. "The last time she was here her sole purpose was to try to kill them all - again, remember? She failed and was sent back to the other side where she remains."

"But do you remember the impact she had on Klaus while she was here?"

"She's _dead_, Damon. It doesn't really matter what kind of influence she had. Bonnie isn't going to help you do anything. She won't even talk to me anymore."

It was still slightly unsettling to hear Elena talk so cavalierly about her old friends. She sounded like she couldn't care less if her once best friend ever talked to her again.

"We don't need a witch." He kept his eyes trained on Elena, waiting for it to click in her brain, and he saw the moment it did. "We know someone who can talk to the dead."

"No," Stefan protested. "Leave him out of this. Sylvia will certainly not thank you for it, Damon. Haven't we done enough to him?"

"What, brother? There's nothing wrong with reminding him of a few things in order to save his daughter."

He looked from one to the other.

"Who's ready for a trip to New York to see Mr. Jeremy Gilbert?"

* * *

A/N: Read and review please! (Maybe I should change the "second character" description to Klaus instead of Stefan...) :)

-Running


	7. Road Trip

Chapter 7

"_Wait!" _

_Sylvia ran as fast as she could, her feet pounding against the pavement. It didn't matter. She wasn't going anywhere. Like a treadmill, the sidewalk moved beneath her, keeping her in a stationary position despite the burn of muscles telling her brain that she should be going forward._

_Damon was running away from her. Why was he running away?_

"_Come back! DAMON!"_

_He didn't turn. She knew he could hear her. Why wouldn't he just turn around?_

"_Damon, please! Wait!"_

_She pumped her legs harder, faster, but she still made no headway. She opened her mouth to yell for him again, but her toe caught on something and she went down – hard. Gasping as her body slammed into the pavement, she looked down towards her feet to see what had tripped her up._

_It was Damon._

_She froze in shock. What? He had just been running…she lifted her head and scanned the path in front of her. He was no where to be seen. Quickly, she came to her senses and crawled over to him. His skin was dried out and sunken in, causing his veins to bulge out, a distorted shade of blue. No. No, this couldn't be happening. He couldn't be…_

_Tears formed in her eyes and then spilled over, rolling down her cheeks and splashing to the sidewalk in waves of pain and sorrow. She had just gotten him back, he couldn't die now… Tentatively, she reached a hand out to cup his cheek. He felt cold, colder than normal. The tears fell faster, a choking sob escaping from her throat as she slid her hands down his chest to the stake that rose from his heart. With a firm grip, Sylvia pulled. It took a lot more strength than she anticipated, and her stomach roiled as she felt the wood slide out of the vital organs it had punctured, but she removed it and threw it to the side._

_The sobs now wracked her body and she threw herself down on top of his still form. Crying into his shirt, his blood slowly soaking through her own. "Damon…Damon…" she whimpered._

_Then he moved. _

_Her body jerked in surprise, but she held on, afraid to pull away lest she discover it had only been her own breath that had tricked her mind into thinking his chest had risen. But, no. With her ear flat against his chest as it was, she heard the slow 'lub-lub' of a beating heart._

"_What's the matter, love? Is something wrong?"_

_She wrenched her head up and gazed into the face beneath her that was no longer Damon's. _

_It was Klaus._

_Sylvia's eyes searched his face in confusion and panic. Gone was the pallid face of death. The stake was no where to be found. The blood had disappeared entirely – her hands, her shirt, completely clean. Damon was gone._

_Klaus smiled._

"_What? Where's –"_

_His words came out silky smooth, like velvet sliding across polished marble, "Oh, Damon? I wouldn't bother myself worrying with him if I were you." Klaus pulled her down to him, pressing their bodies together in an intimate manner. She struggled against his arms, but she was no match for his strength. _

"_Stop! Where is he? What did you do?"_

"_Relax. I didn't do anything, love. See for yourself." He pointed off to the right. She turned and nearly cried out – her voice obstructed by emotion in her throat. Damon was lying in a bed…with Elena. Though they were both under the sheets, their body movements made it all too clear what they were doing._

"_No…" she whispered, her heart shattering into a thousand pieces._

"_Look at me." Sylvia couldn't ignore the command in Klaus' voice. Slowly, she turned her face back to his, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks in torrents. "You don't need him." His voice was tender and he reached one hand up to gently brush away the tears with his thumb. The sounds of fervent love-making lessened; Damon's voice faded away to nothing. "Look at me," he said again, and her eyes bored down into Klaus' as they brightened to the tell-tale gold of a hybrid; but this time, she wasn't afraid. His hand moved to the back of her head and he pulled her down, her body unresisting._

"_That's my girl…" He whispered as their lips touched and heat blossomed throughout her body. _

Sylvia jerked awake so hard she hit her head on the door.

"Ow! What the hell?!"

She looked around wildly, her mind rebelling against the dream-turned-nightmare-turned…something. Her hair brushed against her shoulders as she shook her head fervently back and forth, trying to erase the images like her mind was some kind of Etch-a-Sketch. A low chuckle brushed against her ears and she turned. Klaus was sitting across the seat from her, one ankle resting across the knee of his other leg, his chin in his hand, and delight in his eyes.

Against her will, her body heated from the core outward as the feelings of the end of the twisted dream resurfaced. _No. _Furious at the mental intrusion, she narrowed her eyes at her captor. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Who do you think you are?!" Rage was more than evident.

"Just having a bit of fun. This trip is rather boring, to tell the truth."

The complete selfishness of vampires was really starting to get to her. What was it about them that made them think they were so superior to humans that they could just toy with them in any way they chose to? "I'm not here as your play thing, Klaus, so find some other form of entertainment," she bit out, her hands fisted in her lap with anger and embarrassment. There were things in her mind she didn't want to be shared, moments in time that were hers alone. There was no way to know if Klaus had seen them, and she certainly wasn't going to ask in case he hadn't but decided after he questioning that he'd like to. This trip was turning into a huge pain in the ass. She had been put to sleep by a hybrid, woken up still in the car, her hair was probably tangled all over the place, and to top it all off she still hadn't eaten anything.

Klaus laughed as her stomach growled audibly. Well, wasn't that just fantastic. She scowled and turned away from him. She'd rather look out the window at the trees flying by, even if it _was _evidence that she was going farther and farther away from Damon, than look at that hybrid's face. What a complete jerk. As if prying into her head and viewing the innermost, hidden thoughts there wasn't enough, he had to actually change her dream into something perverted. She quashed all thought of how nice it had been to kiss him. It wasn't even really him, just the version of himself that he projected into her mind. He _probably _wasn't even a good kisser. He _probably_ smelled like dog.

"Are you going to pretend you didn't enjoy that?"

She studiously ignored him. She had given herself over to Klaus to save her friends and the man she loved, even if he was a complete ass, but that was all. If he needed her blood, so be it; she wasn't afraid of needles or pain. But that was all she would give him. He was one of the oldest vampires in existence. It wasn't safe to get comfortable around him. Who knew what he would do from one moment to the next? She couldn't stop him from getting into her head when she slept, or from using compulsion, but that didn't mean he would have an ounce of her when she was in full control of herself.

"Look at me."

His words echoed the dream perfectly, and she knew he did it on purpose. She closed her eyes tightly and continued to ignore him. She could do this. Damon had taught her to be strong at a time when she felt anything but. He may be conflicted now, and he may treat her like a blood bag, but she knew he wasn't really like that…not with her...not anymore.

"Sylvia, love. I said look at me."

Klaus' voice had dropped in pitch to a dangerously low level. With a small sigh, she opened her eyes. It might be best to just go along with what he wanted, within reason. If she antagonized him too much, he might just compel her to do whatever he said. She'd heard horror stories, from Damon of course, about vampires doing that. It sent horrible chills down her spine to think of it. How awful it must be to have no control over your life. Then again, maybe she would know that feeling soon enough. Klaus might not ever let her go. Resigning herself to that possible fate, she turned and regarded him carefully. He didn't necessarily look mad, but vampires were masters at schooling their features into nothingness. His sculpted mouth and jaw were set firmly, almost like he was disappointed in her. His eyes were staring straight into hers, and the danger of compulsion flitted through her mind once again, though she knew there was no sense worrying about something she couldn't really control.

"Better. Now that I have your undivided attention, where would you like to eat?"

Sylvia blinked, momentarily taken aback. She actually had a choice in this? Huh. With a small shift of her body, she looked out the front window at the road before them. They were still on the interstate. The signs flashing by listed the hotels nearby, gas stations, and fast food restaurants. A small smile grew on her face at the image of Klaus, an immortal hybrid, eating at a place like McDonald's or Wendy's.

She settled back into her seat, her arms crossed over her chest. "I don't really care. Wherever I can get a burger is fine."

"Ah, a burger does sound good, doesn't it?" He promptly leaned forward to tap his driver on the shoulder, conferring directions to him and he pulled onto the off ramp. As they circled around through a drive-thru of a little burger joint, Sylvia turned her thoughts inward. Would Damon try to rescue her? If Klaus was being honest at the Salvatore house, then any hint of pursuit and she would be hurt. Maybe Damon just wouldn't risk it. She felt a small stab of pain at the thought, but quickly pushed it away. There was no reason to entertain the thought that he would. He might have stood in front of her at the first sign of danger in his home, but that didn't change how he had acted towards her before that. She knew her aunt wouldn't bother trying to save her. She was obviously detached from her humanity; she hadn't even bothered to pretend to be on her side when Klaus showed up with his hybrids. Life was so uncertain.

What would happen to her apartment and all of her things if she never came back? She supposed they'd just be taken and thrown away, sold, or donated somewhere. Harold! Her teeth worried at her lower lip at the thought of her poor kitty having to fend for himself. Maybe she could somehow get a message to Damon to pick him up? And it looked like she'd never get that album recorded. Well, at least if she was living with Klaus and following him around in search of werewolves she wouldn't have to worry about having money for anything. He was obviously wealthy enough to do whatever he wanted.

"Something bothering you?"

Her eyes flickered over to his at his question. "Do you honestly care or are you just trying to make conversation?"

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "Why is it that every time you try to ask a simple question women have to read too much in to it? I heard you sigh and thought I'd ask if something was wrong." He paused as the food was passed through the drive-thru window and back to them. "So, what is it?"

The aroma of greasy burgers assaulted her nostrils as he handed her one of the bags. "I was just thinking about all the loose ends at home."

"Your music?"

"Partly, yeah. I was working on a new album when Damon waltzed back into my life. That, and my apartment is going to be empty, and my cat is going to have to fend for himself outside." She sighed and pulled a French fry out of the small carton.

"All your things will be taken care of." And then he took a bite of his burger. Oddly enough, it didn't look as weird as she thought. Where she had first imagined him only eating in fine restaurants where each meal had its own set of silverware and the variety of wine was never-ending, he actually looked quite at home with a burger in his hand, like he was just an average guy. It was…humanizing.

_Not good. Not good. Not good._

Ignoring her fluttering stomach, she peeled the wrapper off her own meal and dug in, her thoughts drifting back to Mystic Falls and Damon as well as forwards into the mountains where they were headed in search of werewolves. As the car pulled back onto the interstate, she cut her eyes over to Klaus who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. She wondered if she would ever get to see Damon again and what, exactly, her life was going to be like now. What was in her future?

* * *

"For the love of all that is holy will you _please_ turn that off?"

Damon ignored the whines of Elena in the backseat. She had been restless since they left Mystic Falls. Each mile that brought them closer to her brother only served to make her more anxious and ready to bolt. Damon was over it and Stefan, too, by the looks of it. So far she had complained about the music choice, the speed, the traffic, that she was sitting in the back, that she was hungry, that she needed blood, that she was stuck in a car with the two of them, and about a thousand other things. Not once had she said one word about her own niece, a thought that still irritated Damon to no end.

"What _is_ this, anyway?"

Damon sighed as Stefan reached forward and switched off the stereo system.

"It's called _music_, Elena," Damon groaned. "Just shut up already."

"I'll shut up when we find someone to eat. I'm tired of sitting in this car and I'm hungry. We've been on the road, stuck in traffic, for hours."

Traffic _had_ been hellish, but they were nearing New York City – and Jeremy's apartment.

"I'm serious. If we don't stop somewhere to grab a bite, I'm going to lose it."

Damon looked sideways at his brother. If he was being honest with himself, he could use a little blood, too, but he didn't know if Stefan needed to be around while he and Elena both fed. Stefan nodded slightly, indicating he was alright with it and so Damon took the next exit. It was late afternoon, and a little too daylight-y for his taste, so he drove around looking for a more shady area where it would be much less likely for them to be seen. He spotted a gas station directly down the road and headed over to it. It wasn't sanitary, exactly, but everyone had to get gas and the busier it was, the more options.

He pulled up to the pump and scouted the cars. A woman in her mid-forties with a van full of kids, a trucker with a gut hanging over his belt and a cap on backwards, a boy who looked about thirteen inside at the counter trying to buy cigarettes…ah. Perfect. Just as Elena was climbing out of the car, a small, four-door sedan pulled in carrying two girls in their early twenties. Those were usually the easiest to lure away from anyone else, their minds – so eager to fit in to what society wanted of them – were easily malleable and extremely vulnerable to compulsion. He bobbed his head in their direction and Elena met his gaze with a nod. Together, they walked towards the car while Stefan got out and began to pump the gas.

"Hey! Excuse me!" Elena called out to the girls, laying on a thick Southern accent. "We're a little lost. Could ya'll help us out?"

Without even hesitating for a second, one said, "Sure! Where are you headed?"

Damon followed Elena up to the car, smiling brightly at the other girl who couldn't keep her eyes off of him. He leaned down close to her, capturing her eyes with his, effortlessly pushing his influence from his mind to hers and said, "If you come around to the side of the building with us, we'll show you. Don't worry. You'll be perfectly safe with us and be right back in your car in no time."

She smiled, the poor vapid girl, and immediately walked off to where the shadow of the building hid them from view. It took just a second for him to lower the wall of self-control just a fraction and let the bloodlust come flying through. The surge of power and need flowed through his veins, seeking the substance that gave him life. He felt the vessels right above his cheekbones swell just enough to make them visible and he knew the whites of his eyes would be completely red: a monster's face. His fangs extended and he nearly sighed. It didn't matter how many times he fed, it was always a near-orgasmic experience, a brief slake in the eternal thirst that haunted him.

The girl didn't even blink at the transformation, so tight was his control over her mind. He only paused for a second to check that Elena was sufficiently hidden and wasn't going to kill the other, before he allowed the full vampire in him to take over, sinking his teeth into the girl's neck, puncturing the main vein, and letting the blood flow to him. Subconsciously, he counted her heartbeats, checking her pulse, keeping her alive. When he felt it slowing down, he stopped and pulled back carefully, keeping his face blood-free. It was a technique not many vampires cared to learn. Then, as was his custom, he bit into his own wrist and fed the girl just a little of his own blood to heal her wounds.

He grasped her by the shoulders, again looking into her eyes, compelling her to do as he said, "Now, I want you to get back in your car with your friend, drive to another gas station, and get whatever you needed there. Okay?" She nodded and he released her, watching as she joined her friend in the car and sped away.

Elena heaved a contented sigh as she walked by his side back to the car where Stefan waited not too patiently. "That's much better."

Damon rolled his eyes. "I'm so glad. Does that mean you're going to quit complaining now?"

She playfully elbowed him in the ribs and he stepped out of her range. When she looked sharply up at him, he boldly held her gaze, narrowing his eyes, searching for some shred of humanity left in hers and coming up decidedly short.

"What is your problem with me?" she asked, her tone more than a little pissy.

He shook his head as he opened the driver-side door and situated himself behind the wheel. "You honestly don't know?"

She made a 'hmph' sound as he pulled back onto the interstate, speeding them along towards the 'Big Apple.'

"I know it has something to do with Sylvia."

"Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Stefan, tell her what she's won!"

Silence.

Damon looked over at his brother, a frown passing briefly across his face, gone before anyone could see it. He knew that smelling the blood would get to Stefan, yet he had done it anyway. He had tried to teach his brother control. When Elena faded away into the darker side of vampirism, he had done all he could to help his brother out, a difficult feat since Stefan still hated Damon for "taking her away" from him. As if he had done it all on purpose.

For a time, he thought it was working out okay. The cravings were always going to be there, that was a part of it, but Stefan was finally able to feed, heal, and erase without going into full on Ripper mode and tearing the bodies into pieces. They had, with the help of Caroline, Tyler, and several other vampire/hybrids, gotten the entire town off vervain and compelled all the more suspicious people to ignore the fact that they were never aging. Again, a rather difficult feat, but the people of Mystic Falls were apt to believe in the strange and there, truly, weren't that many full-time residents.

Life was surprisingly good. With Elena gone, the Salvatore brothers had finally been able to grow close once again. The Original family, what was left of them anyway, left them alone. There were no ghosts. No angry vampires trying to kill them. No werewolves or hybrids intent on poisoning them. It was easy, simple.

And Damon had been incredibly bored.

It was when they were leaving for a rather impromptu trip to Europe that everything had gone downhill. They had secured a couple of Tyler's friends to watch over the boarding house while they were gone, just as a precaution. Their bags were packed and they were about to leave for the airport when, out of absolutely nowhere, Stefan had snapped. He had ripped out the hybrids' hearts and fled with no word of where he was going or why. And Damon, per usual, had to clean up his brother's mess. When he had finally caught up with him, Stefan had killed three humans, ripped their bodies to pieces and then tried to put them all together again like some sick Humpty Dumpty tale gone vampire. All that work, all that time spent working with him - all of it went to waste.

That's when he had gone to Richmond.

He tore his thoughts away from that place. If he thought of Sylvia too much, the guilt began to eat away at him. And Damon did not do guilt.

He had tried to convince Stefan that he was his own biggest enemy and continuously torturing himself with his diet was going to be a losing battle no matter which way it went. It always was. Now, he was apparently _back_ to no-human blood _again_, but Damon wasn't going to tiptoe around him anymore. It didn't work then and it wouldn't work now. Stefan was going to have to get over himself and solve his own problems for once.

"Damon, if you're interested in my niece, just say so. It's not like I'm going to care."

Dammit. He didn't want to talk about Sylvia until they found Jeremy. Guess that wasn't going to happen. "That's just the thing, Elena," he said between his teeth. "You don't care. You didn't tell her you weren't really dead. You didn't tell her about Klaus or the hybrids. You never once checked up on her in over a decade. You don't care. You've flipped the switch." He shrugged, ending the conversation.

"Just because I've 'flipped the switch' as you put it, doesn't mean I don't care about my own family." Her tone turned serious and, when Damon looked at her in the rearview mirror he saw that she was looking intently at Stefan, her eyes undeniably sad. "You understand. Don't you, Stefan?"

"Elena, just…don't."

She scooted forward so her head was between the two front seats. "Don't what, Stefan?"

"Don't talk to me like you understand me and don't pretend that you care about me. I'm done with your games and your lies." Stefan turned his head and looked Elena dead in the eye, his expression blank of everything. "I don't know what happened to you, but the Elena I knew, the Elena I loved," he paused, his eyes flicking rapidly between hers, "is gone." He straightened back up in his seat and looked determinedly out his window, his posture saying he was done talking and being a part of the group. Fantastic. That was all Damon needed: Elena and Stefan to fight and make each other get all emotional and depressed or angry and spiteful. Drama between vampires _never_ ended in a pleasant manner.

He watched through the mirror as Elena's eyes widened in shock before she shoved herself back onto the seat and looked mutinously at her surroundings. With an audible sigh, he merged over into the fast lane and pressed the pedal down harder. The quicker they got to New York – the better.

* * *

A/N: I know this was kind of a filler chapter, and I apologize, but I had some dialogue I wanted to have between the characters here. The next one will be much more active. :) Thanks for reading, you awesome and fantastic people, you! Review, please, and let me know what you think so far!

-Running


	8. Progression

Chapter 8

"Well, here we are."

Sylvia looked around her, one hand against her forehead shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun. For countless hours they had been driving on winding roads, weaving through the mountains, searching for god-knew-what. Was there a certain type of woods that werewolves liked to romp around in? Perhaps some visible sign of their inhabitance that was only obvious to other shape-shifters?

A shiver overtook her body and she wrapped her arms around herself. She hadn't banked on it being so much colder in the mountains, which was stupid of her considering that higher elevations generally meant cooler temperatures.

"Here."

She turned and found Klaus with arm outstretched, a coat grasped in his hand. "Put it on. You're obviously cold."

She regarded him suspiciously, but donned the jacket all the same. It was a nice, black leather, instantly cutting off the wind from seeping cold fingers into her pores. She studiously ignored how nice it smelled.

The two hybrids that had accompanied them began sniffing at the air and walking closer to the tree line on the side of the road. It was bizarre to see two men who looked just like regular humans sniffing at the air like animals.

"Where are we?" She asked Klaus, still refusing to look at him.

He stepped up beside her, his eyes trained on his hybrids. "Fairly deep in the Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee," he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. "My sources have indicated that a pack of werewolves chose this area as their stomping grounds – quite a lot of bears around, you see."

"_Bears_? As in _black bears_? Aren't they endangered or something?"

Klaus laughed and Sylvia felt her cheeks warm slightly.

"Not quite, but since werewolves only change on a full moon they don't have quite as large an impact on the ecosystem as you might expect. Besides, werewolf packs tend to be small. There aren't that many of them left."

"Why not?"

She saw him turn his head out of the corner of her eye, looking at her with those brightly-colored eyes. "You sure are curious today."

"What can I say? A good night's sleep brings out the best in me." Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. She took a chance to peek at him and found his lips turned up in a smirk, amusement dancing in his eyes.

"Very well. Vampires mostly eradicated the species."

"Because their bite is poison?"

"Ah, so Mr. Salvatore didn't keep you completely in the dark, then?"

She shrugged nonchalantly. Truth was, she didn't know nearly as much as she wanted to. It hadn't been until his brother came out of the wood work that Damon had even told her werewolves existed or that they could kill a vampire with one bite.

"Not completely, no, but I'm still mostly in shadow. Doesn't that give the werewolves an unfair advantage? How are they losing to vampires?"

"Werewolves are only stronger than vampires on the full moon. While they still heal quicker than humans and have supernatural strength, they are no match for vampires any other day of the month. That gives vampires the _unfair advantage, _as you put it."

"Hm."

The hybrids slipped into the foliage; no clear path or trail was discernable. Wait a minute…

"Am I going to have to traipse through the woods with you?"

Klaus looked at her curiously, his head slightly tilted to one side.

"I hadn't planned on it, no. You don't seem the type."

Sylvia bristled at that. What a chauvinistic judgment. It might be very near the truth, but still…

"I can take care of myself in the wilderness, _thankyouverymuch_."

"I never said you couldn't, love," he said, sarcastically placating her, "but if I'm to catch up to this pack and deal with them before they change, I don't particularly need a human about."

Fair enough.

"But don't you need my blood? Isn't that why I'm with you?"

His smirk grew slightly bigger as he reached into his pocket and pulled out several vials full of a dark red substance.

Oh…

"While I was asleep?"

"Well, I figured it'd be easier."

"Yes, because I can obviously put up such a fight against you." She rolled her eyes.

"Now, now. A snarky tone will get you no where in life."

Sylvia snorted derisively. How much time had she spent in this hybrid's company and she could already tell that he abused the verbal form of sarcasm? Men were the same – no matter what species they were.

"So, you're just going to leave me here?"

"No worries. My two mates here will keep an eye on you, protecting my assets and all that."

Well, that was just great. With a frown, she sat down on the edge of the backseat of the car, stretching her legs out into the road in front of her. Her eyes followed the lithe form of Klaus as he entered the line of trees and was soon lost from her sight. His two lackeys watched him go, seemingly nervous at their leader being out of sight. Were all hybrids so freaking devoted to their creator? Or turner? Or whatever you would call Klaus? It was kind of creepy…

She took a moment to look around her. Despite the circumstances of being here, she couldn't deny that the mountains were beautiful. True, it was a bit chilly, but the sky was a crystal-clear blue, the trees were a brilliant green, and it was so…quiet.

Inhaling slowly, the freshness of the air rejuvenating her spirit, Sylvia's fingers began to pick out chords on an imaginary guitar, her eyes closed as she willed herself to make the most of this rather unfortunate situation.

* * *

"Are you sure this is the right place?"

"Really, Elena? You don't even know where your own brother lives?"

His displaced ex-lover shot him a glare that would have withered a man of lesser spine.

"I don't keep tabs on my mortal family, Damon. Weren't you the one who taught me that is much easier than the alternative?"

He raised an eyebrow, his mouth naturally turning into the smirk he usually kept in place there.

"I never said that _you_ should do that, only that Stefan and I found it the easiest course of action in the beginning." He paused. "Well, after Stefan murdered our father, that is."

No reaction whatsoever from his dear brother. Fantastic. The Stefan with no sense of humor was not a fun Stefan to be around – ever.

"Well, we might as well knock then, shall we?"

Damon looked up at the rather large building. It was obvious that it had once been a single residence, probably a large home for some aristocratic family who thought they owned the whole of New York – or perhaps they had. Damon had spent some time here in the last hundred years, but he had never cared for it, never invested himself in the city that never sleeps. Regardless, it didn't matter what this building had once been; now it was divided into several apartments, each large by New York standards.

He cleared his throat and pressed the button to the right of the door. A buzzing sound, barely discernible to his advanced hearing, sounded somewhere within and a crackly voice came through the speaker above his hand.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes," he said in his most polite and friendly voice, "we're here to see a Mr. Jeremy Gilbert."

Pause.

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Gilbert is not expecting any visitors."

Damn these people and their security. This was technically a place of residence, so they couldn't enter without being invited.

"Oh, move over." Elena elbowed Damon sharply in the ribs and he obligingly stepped out of the way. She put her mouth close to the microphone near the button, "I'm Jeremy's sister, Elena."

Pause.

"He said _you _may come in, but your two friends have to stay outside."

Damon growled in the back of his throat. Gilbert's were always, _always_ trouble, and too smart for their own good. There was a click as the door was remotely unlocked. Elena reached out to wrap her fingers around the handle at the same time that Damon reached out to wrap his fingers around her wrist.

"It was my idea to seek Jeremy's help," he said lowly. "You've got to convince him to let us inside."

Elena's eyes flicked from Damon's hand up to his face. "Do I?" She tilted her head to the side, her eyes narrowing, reducing the deep brown of her eyes to slits. "What do I get in return?"

Damon's nostrils flared. Damn this devious, perverted version of Elena Gilbert. He wanted to tell her to fuck off, that she wouldn't get anything from him ever again…but it was obvious that Elena didn't give two shits about her niece and that Damon was Sylvia's only real chance of getting away from Klaus. It was no secret that Jeremy had never been a fan of his, especially considering what he had done to (and for) Elena, but this was his daughter. Surely he would help.

Biting back every insult known to man, he said, "What do you want?"

The smile that spread across Elena's face created a pool of dread in his stomach.

"I don't know just yet, but I'll let you know when I decide what it is," and she jerked her arm from his grasp and disappeared inside the building.

Damon sighed heavily and turned to face his brother. "Well, this is fantastic."

Stefan snorted. "What did you expect, Damon? It's Elena. She's devious and vindictive. She'll do whatever she wants with no thought as to how it affects anyone else around her. She is the epitome of selfishness, of vampire."

"You still blame me for that, don't you?"

There was a pause filled with the harsh sound of honking horns, the revving of engines, the blaring television sets, the screaming arguments, the occasional dog barking – all the sounds that make New York what it was. In that pause, Stefan turned very slowly from where he had been facing the door, his eyes trained upwards to where Jeremy's apartment conceivably was located. He turned to face his brother and Damon saw a hollowness in his eyes; a dark place that was created over a century and a half of having things taken from you, of killing mercilessly and then regretting your every decision. It was a darkness that Damon himself had never known, never tasted. It was what came of being a vampire…and hating vampires.

"No, Damon," Stefan took a deep breath and let it out slowly, "I don't blame you anymore."

He raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow in shock.

"Oh? This is a new development. When did this happen?"

Stefan shook his head, an ironic smile on his face.

"Several years ago, actually. I was staying in this place in Colorado; it was beautiful and open, plenty of animals around," Damon rolled his eyes. Stefan and his crazy diet. "I just got to thinking. It wasn't ever your fault that you fell in love with Elena; she was a strong and beautiful person. It wasn't your fault that she became a vampire; Meredith made that decision. It wasn't your fault that your blood was used to turn her; that was the only blood Meredith had on hand. It wasn't your fault that she became sired to you; that isn't something any vampire can control."

Damon closed his eyes for a brief moment at that memory. How terrible it had been to discover that Elena only wanted him because of the sire bond. It didn't matter what she said about it not affecting emotions – only actions. It had made him question every moment of happiness they had had together since she had been a vampire.

"Nothing that happened was ever really your fault. The circumstances were just perfect to make it seem like you were the center, the cause, of everything that tore me down."

"I'm glad you see it that way, brother," Damon admitted honestly. "It always seems that immortality is trying to break us, doesn't it?" He stepped forward to stand beside his brother. "But no matter what, we always end up still here, still together."

Stefan shrugged.

"Just because I don't feel like any of those things were purposeful design on your part, it doesn't change the things that you _have _done – the things that you did over and over knowing how it tore my heart to pieces."

Damon tongued his cheek.

"Yes, well, you've not been the perfect brother, either, Stefan. Everyone makes mistakes…"

"…and some of them follow us around for decades."

Damon made a noncommittal noise in his throat as he joined his brother in gazing up at the window where the soft voice of Jeremy Gilbert could barely be heard.

* * *

_Knock, knock, knock._

Jeremy Gilbert took a deep breath. He had been dreading this day for years it seemed – the day that his sister would come and visit. It wasn't unexpected in the slightest. He had known ever since he saw his daughter's face that she was connected to Elena on a deep level; and though he hadn't understood it, he had dreaded it.

The knocking at the door grew more insistent and he rose from his armchair in response. Yes, he had tried to run from Mystic Falls, tried to save himself and his family from the unexplained terrors that burst through his brain at the mere thought of that place, but Sylvia had been drawn to that god forsaken town, just like so many others. He had lived there as long as he could, but as soon as she was old enough to live on her own, Jeremy had split. A lot of people would think that cowardly, to leave his daughter in a place he felt on a deep and visceral level wasn't safe, but Jeremy hadn't thought that way. He had tried to get Sylvia to move with him, to leave Virginia behind, but she was too enamored with the small town life.

"I'm coming!" he yelled as Elena knocked again.

When his girl had finally left Mystic Falls, he had nearly thrown a party. True, she wasn't too far from it, but she wasn't there. It was odd, when he stopped to really think about the past, that so many parts of it were fuzzy, hard to remember. He could think back to his first years of middle school with astonishing clarity, but some events, years, that took place between then and now were painful to consider.

He shook his head and opened the door, his spine straightening and his breath catching as it did every time he saw his sister. She never aged. She could walk back into high school right now and fit in with the other seniors without a hitch.

_Vampire_.

His heart thudded harder at the word, like it was trying to give away his fear, signal to the death-dealing being in front of him exactly where his life source was centered.

"What do you want?"

"Come now. Is that any way to talk to your sister?"

"I may be old now, but I'm not a fool."

"Perhaps."

They stared at each other for a minute. Elena was leaning slightly against one side of the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, her long legs encased in jeans – just as she always looked - while Jeremy was now slightly stooped, his hair grey, and wrinkles adorning his skin. He was fit and healthy for a man approaching sixty, but that didn't change the fact that he was approaching sixty and his sister was definitely not.

"What do you want, Elena?" he repeated.

"First, I'd like to come in and sit down for a moment."

His fingers tightened briefly on the door, the thought of slamming it shut in her face exceptionally tantalizing, but he stepped back and gestured for her to enter. She did, looking around as she did so, her predator eyes taking in every aspect of the fairly spacious apartment.

"I must say, when I first heard you were living in New York, I pictured a much different place."

"I got lucky," he said evasively.

"Hm."

After pacing around the room once, Elena made herself comfortable on his couch, one leg crossed over the other, her elegant heel bouncing at the end of her foot.

"I'd offer you something to drink, but I gave up liquor a while ago, and I don't suppose you want anything else that I have to offer."

An amused smirk graced her features, but she shook her head.

Jeremy nodded and settled into his favorite armchair, taking a sip from his mug of coffee.

"How have you been, Jer?"

He winced.

"Don't use that name for me, Elena." He leveled a stare at her that was wise beyond his years. "You are not my sister any more."

"You wound me, Jeremy," she said with a theatrical pout. "I just want to check up on my little brother."

"Don't treat me like a buffoon, Elena. What. Do. You. Want."

"It's about my dear niece."

He froze in the midst of placing his mug back onto the small end table, his eyes narrowing on Elena's face.

"What have you done to Sylvia?"

"Now, I'm extremely offended." Her tone suggested she was anything but. "Why is it that you automatically assume I've done something? If I had, do you really think I'd be here right now? Surely, you think more of me than that."

He was no in no mood for entertaining. "No. I don't. Where is she?"

"Well, that takes a bit of explaining to do, and _that_ would be made infinitely easier if you'd let my two traveling companions inside."

His blood was beginning to boil. This was the thing about his sister these days, she just assumed everyone would do everything she asked. He hadn't seen her in years for that very reason and, apparently, nothing had changed. He shifted in his seat, tapping the fingers of his right hand against the armrest.

"I really don't want a bunch of vampires to have access to this building."

Her face gave nothing away, but he saw her stiffen in slight shock. "How did you know they were vampires?"

He rolled his eyes. "Do you think so little of me? I can spot a vampire from a human in a split-second." Vaguely, he remembered killing many, many vampires. Though the reasoning was hazy, he knew he had done it – and that he had done it well. Some instinct had survived from his past, and a vampire in his vicinity gave off a feeling in him like…well, like Peter Parker's "spidey sense" he'd have to imagine.

"Hm." She tilted her head to one side and looked at him, her sharps eyes roving over his features. He had absolutely nothing to hide. "Very well, but I really can't help you unless you do. At least the darker-haired one, anyway. He's the one who compelled you." She said it so carelessly, like it was no big deal.

"He _what_?"

Now it was his sister's turn to roll _her_ eyes. "Don't be so dramatic, Jer." He cringed at the too-familiar nickname. "He's here to fix it, but he kind of has to be in here first."

Jeremy stood up from the armchair. "No. _I _will go down _there_."

Elena stood as he did. "Do you think that wise? It would be much easier to not cause a scene in here as opposed to on the street."

"I won't cause a scene."

She shrugged as he walked past her and mumbled, "I wasn't worried about _you_."

* * *

"Here they come."

Damon turned to face the door as Elena and Jeremy came up to the front door of the apartment building. A frustrated sigh pushed past his lips. "Tell me, again, why we aren't doing this in a more private locale?"

Stefan shook his head as he leaned casually against the railing on the stairs. "Because Jeremy Gilbert is an intelligent man."

Damon scoffed. "I still envision him as that dorky little teenager-turned-hunter in love with his ghost girlfriend."

"That was a long time ago, Damon."

"Doesn't change the facts, Stefan."

The door pushed open and Jeremy stepped outside, regarding the two Salvatore brothers with keen, sharp eyes full of doubt and suspicion.

"Elena says you compelled me," he said, his eyes finally resting on Damon.

Fantastic. She had spilled the beans and now they were going to have a confrontation in the middle of New York in broad daylight. Not exactly the perfect scenario for such a situation.

"Why don't you shout it? I don't think your neighbors three blocks over quite caught that."

Jeremy didn't even blink.

"I want an explanation."

"I'm sure you do."

"_Damon_-"

He turned and faced Elena. Her mouth was set in a rather attractive pout-almost-smirk.

"No, _Elena_," he stressed her name with a sneer, "you don't get to admonish me after throwing our plan out the metaphorical window." His eyes flicked back to the stoic form of Jeremy. He had aged more than Damon had expected. Had so many years passed so quickly? "We need to go somewhere and talk about this."

"Not comfortable out here in the sun?"

He couldn't stop his eyes from rolling. "Really? Are you going to be this obstinate?"

"You tampered with my memories. What do you expect me to be?"

He threw his hands up in the air. "Fine. I won't lie and say I'm sorry when I'm not, but we really don't have time to sit out her and debate the morality of my actions. Trust me, we would be out here longer than you have left."

Jeremy's gaze narrowed on Damon's face. "Sylvia?"

The cold wash of fear that seared through Damon's veins at that name sobered him instantly, wiping all teasing from his voice. "Yes."

"Elena won't tell me what's going on with her. Is she alright?"

"As far as I know – yes, but unless you want her in the hands of an immortal hybrid, I suggest we find somewhere that we can talk and, you know," he gestured towards Jeremy's head, "fix things."

For a moment that seemed much longer than the mere seconds it actually was, Damon thought that Jeremy was going to refuse, tell them to fuck off, and go back to Mystic Falls. Instead, with a very reluctant sigh, he said, "Okay. There's a café a couple blocks that way." He lifted his arm and pointed off to the left. "We can talk there."

"Perfect!" Elena exclaimed, sarcasm dripping from her words. "I'd love a latte!"

* * *

"How does this work?"

"It's a little hard to explain, but he's basically going to reverse the compulsion – kind of like he's removing a firewall in your brain. The memories are all still there, you've just been denied access to them. It isn't too difficult of a task, especially since Damon isn't exactly a fresh vampire."

"If it's so simple, then why does everyone seem so tense?"

"He blocked a _lot_ of memories, Jeremy."

Damon stood in the small queue at the register, putting on the charade that they were all actually there to drink coffee and eat pastries, but the words being exchanged at the table in the corner were all too clear.

Yes, he had hidden a good chunk of memory from Jeremy's brain. Elena had once insisted on it, funnily enough. There was a time in between blood binges when she cared for her brother still, before her humanity switch had flipped off. She had wanted him to go away from Mystic Falls, to live a quiet life somewhere where he could be happy. He needed to remember that vampires existed, so that he wouldn't wonder why his sister wasn't aging, but as far as hating them and knowing that Damon and Stefan existed, let alone all the horrible things –the deaths, the pain, the fighting, the running, the fear – all of that he was better off forgetting.

How long had he sat on the couch with Jeremy, the boy's hands in his own, staring into his eyes and sifting through the contents of his adolescent brain, hand-picking the memories that were too cherished to let go and hiding the rest behind a wall of compulsion? It had taken a very, very long time. Jeremy's entire life had revolved around vampires for years. Elena had wanted him to forget about supernaturals completely. Tyler Lockwood had been Jeremy's best friend for a long time, the two bonding together over supernatural troubles. How many memories involved the hybrid?

The entire process had left Jeremy's sanity barely in tact. Had he not been such a strong man, he would have lived the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital. As it was, many years had passed, much time spent recuperating, before Jeremy was more like himself; although, who that was had taken some time to figure out. A person's life was shaped by their memories.

Damon ordered their drinks and snacks on autopilot and returned to the table, sighing heavily as he sat down.

Jeremy immediately reached out for a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin.

"Well, let's get on with it. I don't really want to sit here with you all day."

"You sure? It won't feel…pleasant."

The old man grunted into his cup of coffee. "Something tells me I can handle it."

The raven-headed vampire nodded. That was probably the truest thing he'd heard all day. Jeremy Gilbert was many things, but weak was not among them.

Damon placed his hands on the table, palms up, and looked expectantly at Jeremy.

"We have to hold hands?"

Elena snorted a rather un-lady-like laugh and Damon leveled a glare her direction.

"No, but physical contact will help. Just look me in the eye."

Hesitantly, as if he would rather do anything else, Jeremy placed his fingertips on top of Damon's, their skin barely touching and yet a shudder of revulsion shot through the older man.

"Look me in the eyes, Jeremy," he repeated, his voice slightly softer, already calling on the compulsion he'd need to erase what he had done. This was not going to be easy. There was no one-by-one manner to bring back the memories. The only way he could do this was to knock down the wall he had hidden all of it behind. The resulting tidal wave of memories could potentially send Jeremy into shock.

Damon's eyes searched the once-young Mr. Gilbert's. "Are you ready?"

Jeremy nodded once.

"Alright then." Damon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Here we go."

* * *

The sound of crunching shrubbery alerted Sylvia to Klaus' return before she actually saw his body. The two hybrids, who had taken to pacing back and forth in front of the spot their sire had disappeared, stood at attention, their entire bodies prone for action.

As he neared, a sharp sense of foreboding shot through Sylvia's gut at the expression on Klaus' face. It was most certainly _not_ a happy one. A flippant remark crawled up her throat, but she bit it back. What was the saying? Don't tempt the beast? She wrapped her arms around her middle, the leather of Klaus' jacket effectively keeping her warm, as she watched him walk back and forth on the side of the road next to the car. Her eyes were drawn to a splotch of red on his collar and she shuddered slightly, knowing exactly what it was.

"Did it not go as planned, Sir?"

Sylvia's eyes flicked to the hybrid who had spoken. His hands hung loosely at his sides, but every other indication from his body showed that he was strung tighter than a bow.

"Considering that I didn't technically have a plan, I suppose you could say that, yes."

Oh, Klaus was angry.

"Did they-"

"Die? Oh, not quite."

Her brow furrowed as she watched the exchange. If they hadn't died, then what had they become?

"So they turned successfully?"

"Oh, yes. They turned."

"Then where are-"

Before he could finish his sentence, a strange sound exploded from somewhere in the woods behind them. Both hybrids spun on their heels to face the direction it had come from, but nothing moved save a few birds that took off in flight out of the canopy of trees. Sylvia had never heard a sound like it. It was almost a howl, but had a strange roar to it – like a wolf and a large cat had mated. Was that…?

Her eyes widened. What kind of race was Klaus trying to create with her blood?

She couldn't take the silence anymore.

"What did you do?"

Klaus turned his head, his eyes meeting hers unabashedly.

"I've created a new race."

"But then why did you say it didn't go as planned?"

"Because they haven't turned back to human form."

She frowned, absolutely confused.

"I thought the point was to turn them into…something – not make them human again."

Klaus teeth clicked together in frustration. "Do I look like a wolf to you right now, Sylvia?"

She shook her head, her cheeks heating as he addressed her like she was an idiotic child.

"A werewolf is only a wolf for several hours at most. The first transformation is often very short – the body cannot hold the new form for long."

That made a certain amount of sense, she supposed.

"So, they should have turned back by now?"

"Yes."

She pulled her lip between her teeth, chewing it thoughtfully. Surely, she should just let this go, just sit in the car and wait until they left. Damn her ever-curious mind.

"What, exactly, did they turn into?"

Klaus shook his head and turned to face the line of trees, his voice soft, deep, and full of a strange combination of awe and apprehension as he said,

"Something new."

* * *

A/N: Eek. This was much shorter than I had intended - my apologies. Uni is back in full-swing and so my writing time is super limited. Not sure how many of you read my other fics, but I've got another chapter of "The Sinner and the Saint" and a brand new Dramione one-shot in the works, so that will be coming up next...sometime. As always, please review! It really helps me know how I'm doing with the characters.

Oh, I also realize that this one skips perspective quite a bit, but I like writing different people. It's challenging and more fun for me. Let me know what you think!

-Running


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